OUT OF PLACE

You live in an inner-city terrace

on land once walked by Gadigal people.

It is morning: you open the door

to collect your Sydney Morning Herald.

On the footpath is a man,

under indifferent blankets asleep

despite the chill and noise of traffic.

He wakes, hands your paper to you:

you exchange a glance

his through half-closed lids of loss.

Do you owe him anything?

Shower and tea perhaps?

Think of your connection:

does not all human history testify

that the fortunes of geography,

set the agenda of our lives?

BAKED OFFERING

My Dad roasted a chicken

that last Christmas.

Rob and I were with him and Mum

in the home at North Epping.

He, and I, as a lad,

built it 30 years before –

we used Oregon and cypress

off-cuts from frame and weatherboards

to boil our billy.

Myeloma was eating his bones,

steroids gave relief enough

for him to cook.

I couldn’t tell if his flushed face

was from the drugs or oven or us

or pleasure with his product.

Multiple impending partings:

we each were boarding

a troop ship for different wars,

leaning over rails

hanging on to streamers,

smiling and choking tears.

“Keep this as a memory,” he said

as a footnote to a short grace.

“Even a chicken roasted

in a small house is enough

to celebrate redemption.”

TREE WITH FRUIT

What knowledge was it?

What seed, what juice

of pomegranate

that split adamandeve

and gave each new each

fear and shame

at the sight

of the other’s

skin?

It is unlikely to have been

about sex – commonplace

among animals. In fact

cloning one

from the other’s rib –

judged poor form by an ethics committee –

No, if guilt was to be assigned

Yahweh would have faced the dock –

an assault, an intervention performed

during sleep without informed consent.

More likely it was awareness of death,

learning that we only visit the garden;

wrinkles form, joints twist and creak,

years turn skin from smooth to sag;

we lose the knack

we lose track.

Knowing this drives us to flee

to dress in fine clothes for the concert

or the play, to hide the surgical scar,

black tie to obscure the strangling cosmic hand

as close and tight as a skin graft

on our throat.  

THE GIFT

Sharon was forty-six

but looked older -

damaged goods, tough life.

Lisa, her mother, was sixty-nine

and apart from mild obesity

was in good trim.

Shaz’s kidneys had packed up

and daily dialysis for years using a machine

with blood-filled serpentine tubes

and wheels that turned for hours

in silent relentless accusation

had become more than she could bear.

Her mother, it turned out, was compatible

and the discussion settled on a transplant.

The two theatres were readied for the event.

The donor kidney was removed, packed in ice

and Jason the surgeon was feeling good

when the anaesthetist announced

“Houston, we have a problem!”

“What do you mean, Gaspo?” Jason asked.

“She’s gone into asystole,” Gaspo replied.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Jason asked.

“Look for yourself: line as flat as the Nullarbor,” Gaspo said,

pointing to the screen where the cardiograph

normally squiggled messages of life.

“Christ Almighty, then bloody-well zap her!” Jason shouted.

“No use,” Gaspo replied, “she’s not fibrillating.”

“I don’t give a shit!” Jason bellowed, so Gaspo zapped her

but nothing happened.

Thinking a hundred thoughts at once Jason said,

“OK – we’ll open her up and collect the other kidney as well.

No use to her where she’s gone.”

Jason took the scalpel, thrust, and bright blood

flowed from the new incision.

“Gaspo!”  he shouted again. “What the fuck is going on now?

Where’s this blood coming from?”

Gaspo turned, more ashen than previously

“Holy Mary, Mother of God!” he said.

“The fucking ECG lead came out of the machine.

She’s actually fine!”

Jason regained his strength,

sewed up the new incision but he was boiling.

“Gaspo, when you’ve got her back to the ward

just piss off fast because I’ll be chasing you

with an ECG lead and I’ll fucking strangle you

if I catch you. Got it?”

Back in the ward, side by side, mother

and daughter were in pain but bright and well.
“How did you go with Mum? Shaz asked Jason

“Fine” he said, taking her hand

“We just had to check her right kidney

to make sure it was OK so we could take

the left one for you

so she has a cut on that side too.”

“And was it OK?” asked Shaz.

“Perfect,” Jason smiled. “Just perfect.”

THREE SISTERS

The mist was light on the Blue Mountains

in September ’87.

My Dad and I stayed in Katoomba

at the Cecil, its glory reduced  

to creaking stairs and the smell of dust.

He spoke of back pain

and on the short walk

from the Three Sisters to Echo Point,

his unusual puffing and stopping

made me fear

something  seriously wrong.

He died next year at 78. 

Sixteen years later

Florence, his oldest sister, hung on,

blind and emphysematous until

I returned from New York.

In three days she yielded up her spirit.

She had cared for their father,

a minister from England, until his death.

She preached his sermons

when he no longer could.

Then Marjorie in Melbourne, even more devout,

left a manifesto about her anticipation

of heaven, and Janet, bereft by Marjorie’s death,

refused surgery for an obstructed bowel.

At night with visitors at the lookout

at Echo Point, tourists gone,

I see the three sandstone sisters,

ghosts of my aunts illuminated

by the propositions of their faith.

I wonder if in the abyss

that separates their time from mine
truth will one day be found.