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ARTS AND CULTURE

I am part of it

  • 17 February 2020

 

Selected poems

 

Earth from space

 

Beyond sunlit planes of sea and sand

Like the shade on my front lawn

Nightshadow creeps over continents

Cities light up in glowing clusters

While the deserts hide their campfires

Something exquisitely cosy

About the world

Tucked in for the night

 

Grace

There are in my life

Moments of grace

Sudden certainty that all

Of life is good

 

Times when the journey

Is on a throne

Carried high and forward             

By those who love me

 

Like when I breathe

The cold moist air at the start of the rain

And the inward gasp

Draws with it the very earth

 

Brothers

 

today

i rode my bike

near the river

we’d known as kids

the houses hefted on stilts

legacy of the 50s floods

the tracks along the banks

as lonely as our empty house

 

i thought of something you said

as we chipped up to the eighth green

at cabramatta last week

we were near the creek

and you said

you couldn’t understand

why they didn’t clean it up

so people could put boats in and use it

 

your words I knew

hid heartache

our common pain

i saw again for a moment

rowboats for hire

kids dropping from a rope tied high in the trees

oars slapping in rowlocks as fathers

rowed their sunday families upstream

 

Nanna’s place

 

a beaded doily for the flies

glass louvres and lino floors

tea leaves in an old square tin

the dark varnished clock 

its pendulum swinging silently

a springy ‘boing’

strikes the hour without argument

 

time passing as it should

albert as present now

as when he stood lathering his face at the mirror

or left his warm imprint in the kapok mattress

 

daisies struggle near the front gate

bobbing their heads in the breeze

ants march in procession across

the path below the empty letterbox

she still says no news is good news

 

 

With Chris and Tony at Bronte

 

as we stand at the rail

looking down on the old rock pool

I try to see myself a little boy in the water

 

but to look is to make distance

easier to be the little boy

see me

looking down fifty years later

 

we watch a crab mid-rock

out of sync with the waves

and a boy about to dive

rocking on the verge of letting go

as each hump of water bellies near his feet

 

he dives

i dive with him

the water enters my nose and throat

i am part of it

 

 

David’s work has been published in the Sydney Morning Herald, various anthologies and literary journals. He has performed his work at Varuna, NSW Writers’ Centre, Poets’ Union Venues, Radio Station 2NBC; and the Live Poets’ Society. His work has also been featured in Red Room projects and can be found online.  He is currently preparing a collection for publication. Main image: An aerial shot of Earth
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