Kitchen

In the slow-warming kitchen of our winters we move.

Touching food with our hands, arranging it, bringing it to our mouths.

Pressing onto and off each other’s bodies.

Distracted from the food and provoked by the cold.

Hungry and then fed.

Lost in our dreams and then loved.

Washing spinach in the sink.

Rinsing and stacking plates.

Undercover

In today’s drama
you are the undercover poet
taking your Mother
out for coffee.
I serve you,
and although
I was in a poetry workshop you taught,
I don’t use the secret code,
so you move to your table
unawares.
I have seen you at seminars,
you seem to be constantly speaking
of faith
and/or your lack of it.

That’ll be $11 thanks.
You pass me a ten,
and say, as your hands fumble in your pockets;
I’m just looking for the one.




(for Bill Manhire)

From the zine The Lunchtime Runner volume 3

Love Poem

There is nothing timid or meandering about my love for you,
it does not head to the shop
for a bottle of milk and a newspaper
only to find itself in town,
browsing at umbrellas and suit jackets.
Although it does notice camellia trees,
the recently pruned climbing roses.

My love for you is not a walk in the park,
although we may, in love, walk in the park.
This love I have for you
is not off the cuff, or impromptu,
which is not to say that my love for you is rehearsal
and performance.

Nothing about it is calculated or expected,
it was not written in the sky
or the sandy fields by the beach,
if it was written anywhere,
it would be on the pathway
next to the pool,
between our bodies,
as we lie there, drying.
Dipping out fingers in the water
and leaving wet notes for each other.
Chlorine in our hair.
Skin baking on the concrete.
Almost warm enough to get back in.

Blankets

In the police vehicle we are pushed close to one another, this is not
a problem, we are family, brothers, friends, we share blood and rank,
we have discussed war and conflict, government developments, land
use, authority and religion, so we huddle close, comfortably, and also
to avoid the cold which is slipping in the cracks.
The blankets they have given us are thin, they do not warm us very well
and they do not feel like the ones at home, they have the wrong smell
and of course, too, they are trying to deal with a wind we never have
to fend off back home. Southern winter, snow on the ground, still
travelling, always a cold floor for our feet, these ridiculous blankets.
The policemen are courteous enough to give us cups of tea, which is
hot in our hands and mouths. But like the blankets it is not enough,
so we keep huddling, we talk about the pathways up the mountain,
the shells on the beach which indicate that a feast took place.

The Courtyard

Two girls have climbed up the steps and sit along the broad arm
of the bridge. They are up quite high, but the sun is too, so there
is no danger. The sculpture hanging above the courtyard is ordinary
to look at and yet many tourists will find it in their photos when they
return home, it casts a large round shadow on the pavestones. Most
things I can see have a glare, it's one of those days, and everyone
comes outside to squint and make the most of it. Spring.
I'm sitting on the steps up to the bridge, so I'm in the way, actually,
of the pedestrians who end up passing close enough to me that
their legs almost brush me, the old grey material of one woman's
socks have a texture which I recognise from my high school
uniform. Two guys run through the square. It's obvious
they don't need to run and that they are not interested in
running as exercise, it's just another competition, another way
to use energy loudly.
The movement of birds close overhead has the sound of a page
quickly turned. Most of this was the same when I left, as when
I had arrived, the girls on the bridge, the shadow, the glare of
everything. I take my sunglasses off and put them in my bag
as I get up and leave.

Moving. Watching.

When what is real settles most heavily before my eyes, and I find myself staring
at it for as long as it lasts, what I often notice is just how large my sense of you is
in my mind.
Often these moments occur when I am alone or at least without companions,
there is no question that my aloneness indicates loneliness
and that I then somehow conjure you up as an antidote.
The great movement into now is engulfing and shakes me out of my
own mind and into the world.
What I find in the world is everybody else, in the sense that I can ever
be conscious of them, those I know,
you.
When the world moves over me, shadows me, when it is colossal
and only a fraction of its true power the appearance of you
in my mind, or next to me, in another sense, seems a corollary of what
we achieve in our day to day drollness, our duties, our embraces
or kisses, our minds lying against each other the way skin does.