Killing
The sound of steel swiped across steel
brings us kids scuttling out
of the weatherboard house
tucked up in the shade
at the back of the mill.
The old man’s honed his blade
for the kill.
He bends over a bundle of wool
jammed between his knees.
A ramrod elbow locks the sheep’s
neck across his thigh.
The animal breathes hard.
A keen blade.
The terror in its eyes.
No Southern Boobook
After Bronwyn Lea
It used to be he nested in a tree
down on the driveway,
his wings folded in a hangar
hung in a bower of limbs and leaves.
His gaze—half alarm, half
wonderment—gripped us with talons
that cruelled the fur of small marsupials.
My Grandfather's Handprint
I met him once. He sat
on a stump in the backyard
at my aunt’s place when
the evening came down
and a moon bloomed pale.
He was a little man, brittle
as bread crust. The wind
wrestled the last wisps
of his hair, and he could
do nothing but allow it.
Heron
She could be a statue: her neck—like rolled metal—
thinning toward the sky,
her beak planing for union with sunlight.
The only patch of whiteness on her beds a dark eye.
Her legs as thin as pencils.
Then she moves; her feathered rump wobbles like a duck’s.
Her neck pulses—soft decibels of ache. A pocket giraffe
in blue motion, she sifts
through the undergrowth like smoke—as if she were its vapour—nudging
Leaves with her beak, her grazing elegant as a breeze. She walks
in garlands of ease, flight folded
into her wings. Blades of lomandra
bow as she passes—her existence an eternity of simple things.
Death in the Afternoon
I brake hard but can’t avoid hitting the bird—
a soft thud on the windscreen. A slack of feathers tumbles
through the rear-view mirror. I turn back to find
the small parcel of her body slid between the envelope
of road and sky, her breast turned upwardsa sunburst
of yellow kindling on the cold expanse of dark tar.
Killing
The sound of steel swiped across steel
brings us kids scuttling out
of the weatherboard house
tucked up in the shade
at the back of the mill.
The old man’s honed his blade
for the kill.
He bends over a bundle of wool
jammed between his knees.
A ramrod elbow locks the sheep’s
neck across his thigh.
The animal breathes hard.
A keen blade.
The terror in its eyes.
No Southern Boobook
After Bronwyn Lea
It used to be he nested in a tree
down on the driveway,
his wings folded in a hangar
hung in a bower of limbs and leaves.
His gaze—half alarm, half
wonderment—gripped us with talons
that cruelled the fur of small marsupials.
My Grandfather's Handprint
I met him once. He sat
on a stump in the backyard
at my aunt’s place when
the evening came down
and a moon bloomed pale.
He was a little man, brittle
as bread crust. The wind
wrestled the last wisps
of his hair, and he could
do nothing but allow it.
Heron
She could be a statue: her neck—like rolled metal—
thinning toward the sky,
her beak planing for union with sunlight.
The only patch of whiteness on her beds a dark eye. Her legs as thin as pencils.
Then she moves; her feathered rump wobbles like a duck’s.
Her neck pulses—soft decibels of ache. A pocket giraffe
in blue motion, she sifts
through the undergrowth like smoke—as if she were its vapour—nudging
Leaves with her beak, her grazing elegant as a breeze. She walks
in garlands of ease, flight folded
into her wings. Blades of lomandra
bow as she passes—her existence an eternity of simple things.
Death in the Afternoon
I brake hard but can’t avoid hitting the bird—
a soft thud on the windscreen. A slack of feathers tumbles
through the rear-view mirror. I turn back to find
the small parcel of her body slid between the envelope
of road and sky, her breast turned upwardsa sunburst
of yellow kindling on the cold expanse of dark tar.
A Waking Dream
I woke in dark and left our bed without
waking her, to come into this room
and write what’s on my mind. And find it’s you.
I picture you in bed—a thousand miles
south of here. I’m standing in your room
to watch your breath fall and swell, your husband’s
arm draped across your waist. I think
to touch you—my fingers on your skin—that you
might wake and slip from bed, and lead me to
your kitchen where I’d watch you make the tea.
We’d talk sotto voce at the table
till light prised the glass from your window.
Awake to the Rest of My Days
Morning strolls the horizon, folding
up clouds and putting them into the sky’s
blue wardrobes. I’ve woken to the rest of my days. The sun—a young
prince—cartwheels on the grass despite himself,
the lilly pilly gilding him
with crimson fruit. The sky yawns: a god waking from fresh-made love and I—
a grifter—wait around the corner of my life, trying to bilk time
As it spills through my fingers like milk. I lug my body onto the forecourt
of the morning in the hope
the sun might soak some reason into me.
The world is the wind,
the night cries of the curlew, the ocean’s slow retreat
from the shore; it’s what remains after time
has hung me out to dry, and the hours
and years I’ve been gifted pass inside the shadow of themselves.
Now, What
After Raymond Carver
Make use of the things around you. This city you
don’t live in, its tiled
roofs tilting into late sun, antennas
clinging to chimney stacks dribbling incoherence down
dark cables. A car door slamming.
An aeroplane hanging
white ensigns in the sky. And this woman
You once loved lying on a bed in a hotel room you’ll
never see again. Strange
how you overcome the temptation
to step out onto the balcony and grip the balustrade,
knuckles whitening, vertigo’s
hands tightening around your
neck—and you swooning over a quick death.
An Unholy Fire
In the evening they burned the bodies beside
the Ganges. They bound them in white cloth like mummies,
and laid them on top of wood stacks and lit them up.
Incense smoke and candle flame crept
among the weeping relatives wrapped in puja
and their best saris, the air gravid with chants
and the clang of drums and bells. Black smoke
drizzled the river past a flotilla of timber
boats painted up like liquorice all-sorts—
tadpole clusters pushing toward the shore—
pregnant with on-lookers.
One Slip
It should never have ended
like this. A light press of her foot:
the wheel hub locks into place—
and there would have been
no frontpage story, no photo
of the lake. Her phone rings;
she answers—and words flood
her ear. She looks into the tree-
tops, sweeps a loose strand of hair
from her face. The moments roll
away. She turns back and the pram
is gone. The call goes out—a child
abducted, they think. Word spreads.
What Cost
I wake at dawn—camped beside a river—
and find you in my head. Roos emerge
from mist, while in my mind a darkened room—
you lying on a bed; light fell through
the window as your skirt rose up your thigh.
Mirrored in the glass, our twins look in
on the life—back then—that time forbade us.
I touch your lips, and your thighs unfold;
your eyes shut fast, that you might deny
—later on—that I was there at all.
When your tongue swims in my mouth like ether
through the stars, you slide onto my fingers
and I search the dark for something lost—
for what might be redressed—and at what cost.
That One Day
She rang to ask if I could write a poem
for Australia Day, but not the one you think:
no Union Jacks or bar-b-ques or beers,
or cricket on tv. Normal’s taking
place—not here—but somewhere else. It’s white,
and it can’t see outside itself. It’s safe—
for some. It’s loud, proclaims itself, denies
the claims of others by its silence. But here,
in a different kind of quiet, an older, darker
story speaks. We’ll try to keep our ears,
our minds fast open to the harder truths,
the truths our hearts might recognise at least.
And we might find our grief for what was done—
a smaller grief that tells the larger one.
Bull
The bull settled his bulk
into the lap of the paddock,
his monumental ease
nestled between the atmosphere
and the slow curve of the earth.
In the pods of his eyes
the dam lay flat.
His half-ton head swung
in the gloaming, horns
thick as a man’s arm.