some mornings i forgetwith the metal of wheelbarrowleaning cool into the curlof fingers damp with mash,the grind of grit in axlea constant to the step gravel crunchof road underfootbuckets shufflingamong the slices of hay and the stamp and breath of horseswaiting down the end of the road,old now with sharp flanksand gentle eyes, and it…
and of course there had been flowers passed between them – fretful fingers plucking at language unlearned, accidentally unsaying the unspoken.
there is nothing to be found here but that that always was. breath hard against this new taste of cold, the moon no more than a smudge in a darkening sky. and yet even now this silence between rain squalls holds memories of nightjars trilling somersault wings among the stars.
she said the way her veil fell, the drape of cloth, the colour, was poetry. but i could not see what she saw and wondered which metaphor came first – falling veils and what we know about everything, about the world, about being women – and what is being hidden or revealed. or wearing poetry…
i waited for the stars through the setting sun, lingering smell of bushfire painting feather clouds into bright birds. i waited for the stars because in dream, after the end of the world, when all that was needed was done, the stars came brighter than any stars i had seen before, like sunlight catching quiet…
how did the cicadas know to sing this strange summer – two days of bare arms, melted cats and the loud growing of greens, tendrilled peas pulling tender leaves up the trellis. sunday brings rain and we turn once more to the quieting of the year.
(it is true our street was named for the first white settler who visited these shores with intent – in the seventies we thought this was ok) it was a childhood drawing of a house door window window walls bright yellow painted bricks. slightly to the right but still mostly in front, a jacaranda tree…
my words are few under this greying sky, wind tossing the trees among clouds that smell of rain while the goats stand by, watching in a reverent silence punctuated only by the drag of branch, snap of twigs. i had cut back the brambles yesterday – cool under a distant blue sky, picked my way…
we came without our gods, without our sacred stones carried from the place the earth rent open and birthed us from the void, without the beasts that named us or the trees that gave us speech, with only the makeshift sky god for company whose truth bent ever in our favour. we came without our…
18/30 then we can go no further. live no more without light for the space between us and the dark we must endure. fall now, it is only sleep my love, that yields us to what never was ours to hold. hawk flight leaves no mark on the wind. there never was any speaking you…