Artefacts of grace
story a shelf lined with gifts exchanges fine as flight our arms unwrap from our bodies for Florence your weight barely dents the fabric over your bed a life of quilts made simple & held up your room a lighter shade of more than ninety years artefacts of grace taught generation to generation to generation & on your bedside cabinet the water glass holds autumn Monday or Molly & Emily from less than a suburb away both my adult daughters peg out the wash a fluttering of rhymes on the nursery sea breeze postcards for David back along the road slit eyed into the black morning turning the wheel through white lined gaps until the country opens as a spread of hands the wide sky relaxing in the hum of hardwoods to the neon flash glamour on a stick glass & concrete the Paris end wet & slick the pavement slides under foot French & purposeful runny eggs & only one of us is fluent enough to get the best seat the dim sim sun breaks through a crust of sky the street’s hustle of deal or no deal hanging together like dripping baskets the walls speak a menu’s script beer shopping in supermarkets is still a novelty the one more cigarette before bed in a few hours the all-day breakfast wall to wall trams wall to wall books the gallery’s lighting is industrial & warm outside is the wool wrap dust of a strip Thursday night cold Pride for Hipsters is too good not to write down past the monuments of pubs where we held your wake & moments of eulogy a bus ride across borders for a cousin who died young here it is hipster cool a sky of tears your beard was always in need of a trim you didn’t live long enough for skinny jeans your style was blanket checks across your shoulders after abandoning a life time of cigarettes you kept warm at the damp end of student housing A free beanie with every purchase would have inspired you to buy something in this ANZAC week revisioned more times than my father’s pleated flannels his medals in the drawer above & you would have stopped