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ARTS AND CULTURE

Falling

  • 05 May 2020
Selected poems  

autumn, mutable

 

relief from heat and

the gushing sea breeze and

this stillness has me wanting

this morning the belly of the river gurgling

— digesting one tide, devouring another

this afternoon, driving up the scarp, a headless dugite

on the off ramp glistening in the acute light

I’ve noticed before how trees begin to die

in the dry granite beds waiting for the rains

caducità

this buttery sun clarifies shadows

they sit close    inviting

 

someone up the street is pruning

secateurs counting cleck cleck cleck

 

 

caducità  falling

this march

after reading Dear March – Come in by Emily Dickinson

closing the leap on February’s door

its Easterly thrashing at night

our skins stretched  feet obese

— the heat of it      leaves crisp-dried

scratching down the street

we’re wishful thinking the old seasons

 

on our screens a virus eats time

winds and weaves     grows and

weather leaves the conversation and

we’re streaming news feeds

dealing statistics  hygiene

anti-bacterial shields

 

in the harbour commercial channel helicopters

hover over cruise ships — passengers file

to quarantine or hospital sheets  

pandemic lexicon of the news

social distance  lockdown  confused

Praise and Blame both mere and dear

 

Still   the season will have its fill of fruit

quince and pumpkin plump themselves

pomegranates are rosy and heavy

the caesia a fall of pink tutus

stops strangers on their allotted walk

to call over the fence what tree is that? 

 

Dear March, you Can’t Come in

don’t touch the door handle

I’ll send you an email with a new refrain

— stay safe

 

 

all of us

 

the Notre Dame spire fell

a clip on a newsite some punctum

a thin spire like all the spires

in all the villages

 

I went back to the quiet spaces

Sunday mornings on a pinewood pew

creaking with the weight of us

huddling between coats

the smell of people’s wardrobes

 

all of us

sinners and drinkers and lovers and babies the townies the farmers cousins gossips the southerners the northerners orchardists spud growers mill workers butchers the matron the chemist the betrothed the flower arrangers the brass polishers footballers ready to leave early some still drunk from the night before and those who just wanted to feel as if Christmas still exists

 

laying our traumas down

singing in unison — con brio

looking up

at the plaster saints

 

a long way from Paris

someone’s rearranging the stains

the awe of juveniles tender as veal

power nudged from its hiding place behind the rock

those who found a god through the rod

wounds still raw smouldering

 

they will build a new spire

 

will we ever re-learn

the habit of sitting

beneath that flat sky?

 

Josephine Clarke is a member of the Fremantle-based writers' group OOTA, and has had short stories and poetry published in Australian journals such as Westerly, Southerly, Cordite and the ABR (online). Her first collection of
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