Sitting in a room with my mother and father

03 February 2015

Now On the cliff path, early, the wind a cool shadow felt at my back: when the sun’s blaze slams into my chest, I am held between them as if both would claim me, pass through me. So grief, with its heart-heat, its pressuring shadows, lays claim, passes into and through us. After, a stillness in which you may learn from memories, know those who’ve gone in new ways; and even imagine their own past knowing of you. My most frequent memory now is of sitting in a room with them, my mother and father, the sense of space and warmth in their presence as, through the opened house, air streams from the garden. The Bay I'm old enough to have wondered what my last memories will be, young enough to seek out new ones that might, in extremis, keep me company. On a century-old pier stump, far out, a cormorant airs its wings – a cross-shape against the mountains, their violet darkness shared in this light, by reefs in the shallow bay. Where I wade, gold lines web the seabed, trace each crinkling green surge. Even cloud-wreathed the sun lays down a path towards me as dolphins thread in, their easeful arcs soon to traverse that ribbed glitter; the peace of evening already present.

Diane Fahey is one of Australia’s foremost poets. Her most recent publication is The Wing Collection: New and Selected Poems (2012).

ARTS AND CULTURE

Sitting in a room with my mother and father

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