Faith is green
'I'll settle for a sprig or two — The savour gracious, the leaves brimmingly green — as if never to say die.'
–Peter Steele, 'Rehearsal'
Where were you?Not in the dark carinside that shrunken spaceon its slow glide to the boneyard.Perhaps in the white lineageof your brothers at the altar,or traced on your crucifix — your DNA, your trust.
Perhaps in the chapel glass,the green shadow of tree,the silhouette of wind — the monkey that will not leaveits back: so many times,in the pattern, your substanceof things: the wine, the wine,the communion bread, foreverfull and aloft as the moon.
After the silver cup,the procession,the soft blood of roses,the car, the cold,the stone steps, and your white brothers — a force of herons or anxious angels,pacing a spellto portal you, or bring you back — perhaps in the outdoor altar, its borders,its fathom-green.
Not in the impossible grey of the skyresistant as God's overcoat — its flannel collar turned up.
Where are your sprigs of mint?Behind the wall,under the ground,unseasonedin the garden?There is a tyrannyof elm,my footsteps,and listeningfor otheraudible patterns.
What memory is like
Officially, memoryis a cardboard boxsent to your home address.
But anyone who's received a memoryknows that it is also untidyas a fledgling's wing
crystalline as crème brûléeand sometimes as acidicas an ant's nest undone by rain.
And sometimes as welcomeas the neighbour's dog — the one that meets you behind its fencejust as you reach your door.
Yet in itis the ruby marbleyou thought you'd lostwhen you played for keeps.
Anyone who's received a memory knowsthat you opened a windowinto a traceryof transparent wire.
Sometimes it will stain your hands.
Anyone who's received a memoryknows that its weightis never more
than the insistent greenof an opened leaf.
Two Fujis
Its flesh is not the white of Mount Fuji;dun-white, it breaks cleanly, juice flowsdown your chin like warm, melted snow.
Its taste is not honey, nor spicy, its skinis not starred with the secrets of insects,nor meadow-yellow, haloed in rose
on its sunny side. This Fuji is fierce pinkwed to neon green. It started in 1930sFujisaki; a fusing of two American breeds,
stalled in '45 when bombs erased that city.When its petals fall, clusters are pared to two.
Susan Fealy is a Melbourne-based poet and clinical psychologist. Her poems have been widely published in journals and anthologies. She is workiing towards her first full-length collection. 'What memory is like' is after Miroslav Holub's 'What the heart is like' and Debbie Lim's 'What the brain is like'.