She threads words
through the scraps of her life
like a hunter
piecing together skins
from rabbits he has killed -
fashioning a quilt for his rough bed.
She is ready at last
For the task
Of remembering and dismembering
Crude, bloody, comfortless
With no guarantees.
The light of the sun
That falls on her
Is sharp
Merciless
It needles her
Like the quest for truth
Dark glasses cannot allay it.
It will be felt.
It must pierce.
A sleepier self
Wants to close her eyes,
bask spread-eagled
oblivious
But the watcher
Strung-out on adrenalin
Is pointing to the clock,
Skewed from too much delay, like the one in Dali’s painting.
Its incessant tick sounds in her ears
as deafening as tinnitus.
There is so little time,
She mutters
Her skin parches across her face
With a new dryness.
‘You, you, you,’
said the poet in her dream,
like an archer drawing a bow.
A sister
Asks her
To be who she is
who is she
to deny her?
30.5
Friday, May 30, 2008
From the verandah
Together they watch the honey-bee
Nose its way into a pinkness of flower
The wild ginger leaves around it droop.
Songololos sit starkly, privately, still
- red against grey bark
One inches its way across a precipice of broken branch.
Another edges between the folded lips of a tree trunk.
She stands, stunned
By the weight of her knowing,
Leans against the balustrade as if it were the only one in the world
She has no time to lose.
If she let go
she would fall into the forest,
she would drown in its tangle.
The breath of the morning
is cool,
it sings through the foliage like a lament.
In the foreground,
a paw paw tree
sways in the wind irresolutely.
Bare of fruit,
its pale yellow tubes need seeding.
She is afraid of her herself
Of her want
- like sugar-cane fields on fire
Fierce, loud, hot.
- sticks cracking in the blaze.
She is an ocean of feeling
Bounded by the real.
Now, her child clutches at her thigh,
asking to be lifted up.
The horizon watches with a steely-grey keenness
as she holds him to her body,
like an anchor.
Nose its way into a pinkness of flower
The wild ginger leaves around it droop.
Songololos sit starkly, privately, still
- red against grey bark
One inches its way across a precipice of broken branch.
Another edges between the folded lips of a tree trunk.
She stands, stunned
By the weight of her knowing,
Leans against the balustrade as if it were the only one in the world
She has no time to lose.
If she let go
she would fall into the forest,
she would drown in its tangle.
The breath of the morning
is cool,
it sings through the foliage like a lament.
In the foreground,
a paw paw tree
sways in the wind irresolutely.
Bare of fruit,
its pale yellow tubes need seeding.
She is afraid of her herself
Of her want
- like sugar-cane fields on fire
Fierce, loud, hot.
- sticks cracking in the blaze.
She is an ocean of feeling
Bounded by the real.
Now, her child clutches at her thigh,
asking to be lifted up.
The horizon watches with a steely-grey keenness
as she holds him to her body,
like an anchor.
Dammed up
She is a dam
In a remote river valley,
Made fuller by floodwaters from an earthquake
Further up, where the mountains are
- heavy, she waits -
pregnant with the fear
of what opening the sluice gates
will birth.
30.5
In a remote river valley,
Made fuller by floodwaters from an earthquake
Further up, where the mountains are
- heavy, she waits -
pregnant with the fear
of what opening the sluice gates
will birth.
30.5
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