Country gate
There were many gates that swung in andout of our street where we lived. Somewere exceptional in iron grillwork. Others
shared the nose of a dog. A few hung overtheir shadows, or lay bereft on their sidesforgetting the rituals of open or closed.
I used to swing on the front gate, eagerto see a space refusing to be still.I could lay my body over the rounded
top rail as if watching the morning'swrinkled map of footprints in sand, blackants erupting from tiny volcanic nests.
Our gate was chain-link steel, an intricatepattern that Gran could have made with her rugand crochet skills had she had stronger needles.
Now the gate is no longer there, pulled downfor four apartments. My parents are no longer there,father going fourteen years before my mother.
This sounds very sad, but it isn't. I believethey are swinging somewhere in heaven.Not on St Peter's gate, but in a body
of metal and cushions, similar to a porchswing, a touch too heavy for a cloud perhaps.But they'd be there alright sitting side by side,
enjoying the view, swinging, back and forth,back and forth, as children do on country gateslooking at the world from a different angle.
farmed out
iold jam tins are sleepers in a rubbish dumpa scarred hollow of digging, even
before the rust came, the yard had a kind of design:trees as old as frost, melon sky at sundown
a coattail earth of flax and ants navigatingsound before the paddocks came
iiordered out on finance plans they cuddled childrenwith their debts. he drew fear from flood and seedless
sun. she traded contradiction for curves and valleyhips, verdant sod of earth, reckless drift of goats.
when the bailiff came, the end of lamb and beef,she clung to rock and let the salt erupt from hands
and tongue the way the body bleeds its bitterness.he roped a bulky contents under tarp,
sped through every gate, clouding exileand the bright disturbance of his wheat
iiihere on this white paper words rimthe borderline of their passion
it moves in some direction to inhabit livesas couplets of unknown pain.
poems cannot see collapsed heartsfresh wounds, first rage, so in here
their darkness spills on fingers to form silencelike a letterbox, where only the clouds go by
Coda: a house of pockets
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