Poems

Yes, I dabble, so where better to gather poems together than in this spot? I invite others to send theirs or to comment on ways in which poetry influences their prose.

Recently I went to a novelists versus poets debate at the Perth Writers Festival and was struck by the beautiful prose poetry read out by Stephen Scourfield from one of his novels. Music and poetry are a part of my life (more listening than producing) and I think the influence tends find its way into my prose, although sometimes I wonder if it is not the influence of prose that finds its way into the poetry.

I thought I'd put one of my old poems up every day or so until I'm done, along with anyone else's poetry or commentary. Hope you find of some interest. Maybe I'll start off with two to herald our Southern Hemisphere winter (not yet - we're just into Autumn, or half-way through Bunuru, for those who follow the Noongar seasons):

A sonnet of the rain

Cold washing hangs limp and tangled on the
Old clothes line over the double-gee patch
Left by my predecessors, and slaps me
With a wet rebuke at this sudden
Impulse for order. A sock lies muddied in
Dirt below and slender spikes prick my skin
Through drifting numbness; unrelenting wake-up
Calls me into being here, here and now
Softness a hushed voice against my window
Tears washing away the dust, warm tears wash
Away a hushed voice, soothes, but I cannot
Hear clearly what sweetness bringing the green
To breathe again with a deep sigh the mist
Of soft light magical sun sparkles streams

Winter 1999

Sweet-smelling
Cut grass in the storm
I'm standing
Part-sheltered by a tree
Shivering awake

Wind splices
Strings of hair and rain
Slicing cold
Whips my skin alive
Cuts away sleep

Winter-felled
Fibro fence
Exposes backyard secrets
Introduces wet dogs
And rain-drenched neighbours


Yellow

Falling into flowers
Flying in the body of a bee
I am pollen legs
Touch me and I stick
To your fingers
Float in the space
Before your eyes
Warm the cold day
Cool the flame
Shine beneath
Your buttercup chin

Blue

Walk outside
Gaze up into the almost-black of me
When you close your eyes
I mesmerise and disturb
I carry you down

You have your shapes, your depths
The blue of the storm, wet
I think dreams
There is a softness there, a pillow
I sink
No holes
No endings
You are my softness, my depth -
Complex, but not academic
Drifting, drawing
You have no answers, only not-questions
And a kind of query that asks me
Drink?

Green

I am green, sweet-smelling and fresh, filled with moisture. I am life, drawing food from the sun, large-leafed, deep, absorbing the light, twining round the trunks of trees, I cover everything, keeping the fruits, I green say do not eat me yet. Stay until I am ready to make way for yellow or red. I am a place to dream, a bed. You stare into the blue with me behind your back. I am a place to rest. You want me here, surround yourself with me, bring me to your home and tend me in pots. I am the world of between.

But this green is slime, algal bloom, the soup from which life springs, the life that smothers fish. It is too rich - not the patient green of English cricket field, or the gentle countryside, soft grass for lying down.

Sacred

This land draws lines around me
Holding me in place, time
Where earth turns to rust
And sky is endless blue
Life skids through scrubbery
Shelters by rocks, in fallen trees
Hides in remains
Builds mud-red towers to track
The circles of the sun
Crackles, spins, and calls through empty skies
Bringing me back.
I walk alone, small-again, bare-headed
Between shimmering reflections
Crunching footsteps
Along a promise of salt-lakes
Over arid flats, crisscrossing
Through recollections
Of sweet rain in cool creek beds
Polished beads of coloured glass
And a discarded childish weave
Of parchment grasses

Look, here I am
Stranded with my father in Yalgoo
In the year of the flood
Where are those post-office girls now?
Who plaited my yellow hair,
Took me everywhere, and called me love
Until the old train trundled us away
On a tightrope raised
Just above the waterline
A bolt of copper silk dropped
And spread across the land
Strained little trees
Poked through where they could
A starving feral kitten
Cried out from a branch rising
From the water like a hand
The guard's kindness
Or boredom and impatience for speed
Saw him wade between the flotsam
And a swimming snake
To bring her shivering to my lap

Peace

So this is what the end of life is like
He said
Last night I found myself slipping away
But I held on for you

We were taking it in shifts
Just like my father to be conscious for the end
Or is it the beginning?
The returning home

There's nothing at the end
He said
Just peace, beautiful peace
Not bad after a lifetime of pain

Nothing's happening tonight
I'll call you
She said
I want to see my new grandson first
He said, stubborn to the end
We laid the baby down next to him
The baby smiled its first

It doesn't hurt a bit
He said
Not after a lifetime of pain
Just peace, beautiful peace

Go home now, I'll call you
She said
If anything changes, but
Everything changes too slowly to see

I was due back at two
At one I felt an urgency
I was on the freeway when he passed
The car slowed of its own accord

No hurry now
He rode beside me
Take it easy
He said

Just like you to hang around
I said
Ever curious
Where's peace now?

Bugger peace
He said
I can run again
Look, I found my other leg.



How to stop time

He thought he could fly
Thought he was moving forward
But he was hung by a ring on a cable
Strung out, suspended on a stretch of wire
That ran
From ordered expectations to scattered dreams
Caught in an ill-wind
Always moving
He had discovered the terrible secret
Of perpetual motion
Would slide back and forth
Future Past
Finite destinations
Tethered
Running in a straight line

One day, as usual, he got up in the morning
By evening, time had stopped

Now the sun comes up
Goes down
His life moves neither forward nor back
Elevated to matter or energy in constant flux
It comes and goes
Appears to change
But change has no direction
And no value

THE GOLDEN CHAIN

When I see the Golden Chain I think

You must have finally found your feet

It no longer struggles in the sand

Has worked its way through ant-ridden layers

Is cantankerous, this tree you delivered

Ornery like you, never giving in

Suffering through

Though I remember you always said

They should cut me off

Just below the ears 

Next minute you’d be laughing at the joke

 

I want you to know that when I moved

The tree came too, dug from the lawn

It had hadn’t fared well

I took greater care the second time

Dug the hole deeper

And filled it with things I thought a tree would like

Puddled it in like you showed me

But still it twisted

And no chain of flowers appeared

Despite the promise of gold

That stirred you in the first place

 

It’s been a full thirteen years, and more

But one day this year

I looked out at the morning

And there amongst bright leaves

Hung your abundant gift

Of golden chains

HOUSE SPIDER

Perhaps a spider can live as long as a mouse.

Longer.

This one in the bathroom window

Too wily to be caught in the white bucket

Studies me from a tunnel in her web.

Each night before my shower we have a staring contest

Eye ball to eyes balls

She stands ready to attack

From the depths of her graveyard home

Hung with tiny trophies

Insect husks, a moth

An expired lover or two

Necessity or endless work

Has made her a little too

Efficient

A little too solitary

She survives routinely

Repairs her web

Trusts in the story already lived

Safety woven from the threads

That make her home

One night like any

Gives way to another

But this evening.

When the dusk turned strangely pink outside

She floated out in forgetfulness

Stepped softly onto the bare window and hung transfixed

As if she were witnessing her own Apocalypse

Fragile dark asterisk outlined in pink.

Gave of herself at last

Unconscious sacrifice

For the first time

I sensed her heartbreaking vulnerability,

Relinquished fear and opportunity,

And let her be.

The light passed

And fell away with her tiny dreams

Into the ordinary grey of night.

 
Binary Oppression

1
She is catalogued and shelved
Reduced and essentialised
As if one can get to the bottom of
What a person is
Through a sound-bite
Or interrogation light
As if one can get
To the bottom
Of what a person is
He sets the light to blind
Studies the harsh detail
Reflected back
But light reflected is light returned
It is his own reflection
That he sees

2

He is negative space
Cheated from the line
He's drawn around her fluid form
He has fixed her there
He says
She is
What he says
She is
Is not
What he says
She is not
He's had to make it good
This elaborate fabrication
His own identity is at stake
If he wants to be fascinating
Then he'd better make her pedestrian
If he wants to dine out
On her faux pas, her flaw of imagined perfection
Then he'd better make it real
Build up the evidence
Her silver spoon (plastic spoon) beginnings
Her middle-class (welfare-class) opinions
Her intolerance (tolerance) of dirt and damage
Her lightly concealed right-wing (left-wing) leanings, (envy) love of money
Manicured hair (hair) and professionally laundered suits
Cake decorating, flower arranging
Al fresco deck and barbecue renovation

3

The last time I talked to her
She smiled and told me that she'd spent her entire life
Working in a low-paid job
Advocating the rights of people
To dignity and humanity

 

 

GAP


In the famous Michelangelo

God stretches his hand a little, without touching

Is caught forever in the act of stretching out

To Adam and the world. The space is the thing

The invitation, imputation, declaration of that gently pointing finger

The languid hand of Man, half-reluctant to receive, passively receptive, seductively beautiful



The Old Man and his once-innocent self; His wisdom conditional on youth’s surrender

I wonder

What moves within the gap? What did you see with your all-seeing eye, Michelangelo, what?

I have known people who shed real tears as they fall down, swooning in ecstasy and wondered at

The chemical composition of that holy water that lies upon the cheek, the structure of joy

The exultation, or relief, that responsibility for pain has been lifted as easily as an eyebrow



Is irony enough to quell the doubt

That lies between the offered, and received?

Does God stand between those old foes, Science and Religion, holding them apart?

His plodding and daydreaming Sons; or does he ask them to shake hands and make up

Examine their beliefs, faith and fact, wistfulness and logic

Objective observation and the half-closed eye of the imagination

And point out all is Good and Wonderful, that Evolution is transcendent Art

And solutions must remain provisional until He packs away His brushes and His clay

 

 

You and me

You and me, our tables don’t quite meet

I’m grey, soft grey and cloudy paint

You are the scratched and dirty floor

You are heat-clammy fan-drifted air

I am the line hanging, waving

You are the black mark on the wall

The clack, clack of china dishes

I am the empty water bottle

You are the filled glass