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ARTS AND CULTURE

Our blind search for sweetness

  • 08 February 2011

the one of us

one is the fret and first on top of zero andmorning is what we drew with the sun in the corner,at our desks, all urgent, tongues awry andthe fact that ants like fingernails was thebeginning of a beautiful clasp of hours but beauty'sof little consequence measured against thesummer of all our contentments, for

summer with its flywire slack and stretch, daysof shimmering bitumen and brindled leaves, thebeginning of the bake and rise of us,the ache and yearn and drip but justat that moment it was the house, the windows, the clouds,morning in crayons, our Christian names, only theone of us, penciled proud on the back

small religion

it's as if, roaming these back streets and lanes,you're writing a small religion, a haiku

of creeds. it's honesty, a symphony ofmissing pickets and dropped fruit. the tongue

is bleeding, but the words come out the same.checking spelling, cursive immaculate,

an orderly flight of birds across ayellowing page. some forgottens, of course,

won't be worded. whose hours are those dressedas cirrus? who connects the whirr of moth wings

to make theory? at these moments the handstutters, moves like cut up water. and some,

some here might make a diagnosis. undiluted,urgent, serrated thinkings. you've entered this pact

between disease, a second hand and all that'sleft and in between. 'inside 18 months',

the doctor's eyes upon you. here in the lanewatching ants, the blind search for sweetness

learnts

number of sips equals number of tastes

cirrus is a smeared, silent language

smother hides mother holds other

more salve in horizons than creeds

thinks spin but a moon librates

we're ants in the blind search for sweetness

monks can tell one silence from another

in ICU it's the day and your name

it's in forgetting, losing North

not long after I'm dead, you'll be dead

a peppermint brailles in bark

we're all wide-eyed in the sudden light

a hammer feels the purpose of a nail

can see the black in the blue louvred light

it rises in scent and wet brackenit doesn't need a wall around itit's empty, further away than deathit could be dust motes, the soft focusit's withered to nought but still singingit pulls away, slides into regretit's becoming unnecessaryit's written in the scrawl of cirrusit whispers that North's not importantit's perforated and unbreathingit's better in the absence of thoughtit leaves moth-wing stains on fore-fingersit's in the split lino, louvred lightit's yesterday, but no-one's noticed

Kevin Gillam is a West Australian writer with work published in numerous Australian and overseas journals. His two published books of poetry