KIN

 

Granny’s basket of wools –

pink, blue and green,

orange. Each ball

a strand of DNA

from which a jumper grew –

enduring emblems, reminders,

though garments now outgrown,

of how intricate the threads

and warm the knit of kin.

 

 

CLOSING TIME

 

Her photos of generations loved,

posted beside the window,

small box of rings and jewel things,

faded silk flowers,

 soft furnishings,

phone, novels.

 Crucifix,

Bible.

 

All packed.

 

It’s a wonder

her bed’s

not gone.

 

Now I look, sound,

even think like her.  

When will it be my turn?

What’s in between –

sunshine, rain –  

before my landfall?

 

ON THE EDGE

 

Covid means we poets meet late each Wednesday afternoon

on this veranda of the Writers’ Centre,

this building once an asylum for those fleeing mental illness.

 

As the day departs, spirits of long-ago patients

move quietly among the trees,

free from the fear of death-eaters

and the grip of taunting hallucinations.

 

I see a prayer tree – perhaps

once used by Celtic patients to post their clouthies.

signalling their yearning to be delivered from evil,

their desire to be well again – and loved.

 

Before the sun completely sets,

we shall hang our ribbons, and seek relief

from ‘the infected winter of our condition.’

CIRCLE OF FIRE

 

It’s not that I didn’t know the danger

but I drove on anyway through the dark,

torrents pissing down.

It’ll only get worse, I thought,

and I needed to get home,

so, I gunned the engine.

 

I’d reached where the road takes a turn

just before Fred’s farm

and suddenly my truck was floating,

well, sinking actually, water rising 

through the cabin floor,

so much water that the electricals all failed.

 

Scared shitless.  I couldn’t get out:

water was lapping my waist

and would soon be at my chin.

My satellite phone still worked – a miracle

and Fred answered – another miracle.

“I’m on my way,” he said.

 

I had no idea what he would do.

He’d brought a semi-automatic, of all things.

I wondered if he was going to finish me off!

“Mind out!” he urged.  He shot through the roof –

a circle of fire – like opening

a can of beans with a screwdriver.

 

I crawled out, weeping, and shaking.

“You’re a bloody stupid bugger!” he said.

 

“Yeah,” I breathed, “and a lucky one, too!”

 

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.