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ARTS AND CULTURE

Attentive to rumours of healing

  • 26 February 2008

Uncoupled

Her skin bears witness to his absence, peeling peeling, shedding flakes as fragile as ash. The rooms, ambivalent about space, contract expand at will. Day by day she is shrinking. Memories everywhere: escaping a locked cabinet shoeboxes of cards, letters. Abundant with the familiar looping script, the flourish of his name, they demand one last reading before the burning. Pulled nightly from sleep by the undertow of randomness, uncertainty, she lies becalmed in morning light, attentive to rumours of healing.

 

Pathways

After a sunset of ravishing pinks, crimsons — a night as black as a conjuror's cloth. She steps outside, her eyes fixed on the Southern Cross, her feet following the path he'd flagged six months ago. Now the moon, full of itself, illuminating cathedral spires, exotic palms. She sees his face imprinted on the moon (as he'd once fancied), hears him declare the constellations to be wondrous, profound. And remembers him standing in dream's doorway, smiling, reassuring: I am here. Always here. Guided inside by a pathway of light, she throws open the shutters and sleeps, moon lapping at her skin.

 

Light

At the window candlelight trembles, is stretched then returned by the breeze to a teardrop glow. Overhead, defying curfew, plane after plane, their insistent drone near yet distant; strangely comforting. She wonders, is space a something or a nothing, the sky a confused mass of stars, incandescent meeting points. And now this news flash: a helicopter on a mountain, blades turning, spinning silver in the wind. No survivors. At her window, the candle still burns.

Lorraine McGuigan's poetry has been published in journals in Australia, UK, and the USA. Since 1995 she has been the Managing Editor of Monash University's Poetry Monash. Her poetry collection, What the Body Remembers, was runner-up in the FAW Anne Elder Award. Author photo by Rosina Lamberti.