PARALLEL

 

Milk of morning mist flows slowly

among the sandstone cliffs,

nourishing them in silence.

Morning slows,

and the mist loses form,

fading like a gentle memory.

 

In winter the milk flows freely

as liquid ambers lose their leaves.

Roads disappear beneath its shroud.

Mist’s heavy sibling, fog, arrives.

Come evening and the shadows climb

escarpments as they fall asleep.

 

The traveller's journey starts 

with mother's milk

scales the valley's walls in youthful strength

and ends in rest at dusk

in long and deep ravines.

HOLDING ON AND LETTING GO

 

It was how her right hand slipped from mine,

while she clung to the ladder with her left

as the chopper lifted

that became the nub of my nightmares.

 

We found her in Vũng Tàu

at battle’s end – hiding in my tent –

a tiny, shivering kid,

poorly clad.

 

In halting English, she told us

her family was dead.

She’d watched from the sidelines,

saw our paramedics work – and followed them.

 

Months in that apocalyptic jungle

and two mates had adopted dogs.

None had nurtured kids:

we kept her out of sight and fed.

 

Decades later after surgery in Sydney,

I woke woozy in Recovery.

Dr. Van, my surgeon, grasped my hand –

though I’d not met her pre-op.

‘We didn’t let you go,’ she smiled.

 

It was her –

then she was gone.

HANDS

 

I saw Gary’s hands when I was ten:

he taught me Sunday School.

He was a newly minted doctor:

I liked his gentleness and purpose

and wondered

what he might become?

 

His hands had soft black hair.

At home in bed that evening

I looked at my hands and

imagined them like Gary’s,

traced where the hair might grow.

I wondered, what would I be by then?

 

I took the medical path,

served briefly with the church in PNG.

Having seen what could be done

with jabs for whooping cough,

hygiene for gastro,

I moved to public health.

 

In time, my hands resembled Gary’s,

but now my hair is lost.

Game’s played; the score struck –

the sum of wins and losses.

My coin’s in the offering plate,

lesson’s done. Until next week.