Autumn spider
Overnight, on some great whim, he went careening down the coast of AfricaAnd snared the cape of a whole new continent;And I might have caught him in the actAs you might catch a stagehand scrambling into the wingsAt the first note of an overture,But I didn't.
Now he is pursed within the curl of his leaf,A monk at watch for those lost soulsWhom he might trap in the sneerOf his silken intentions:A trappist pehaps.
But, soundless as a lawyer plotting,His mind still spinsWith subtleties that cling and bend:If pale winter were not wheezingJust beyond the horizon,We might, each of us,Be trussed in the spider's galaxy of contiguous things,An ounce of thinking muscleLeft to sweeten on the bone.
Morning Star
Minus two.Winter solstice just days away,And, turning out of a frosted dream,The slow, reluctant dawn.On the South Geelong stationWe shuffleIn a slow wintrum of dance;Froid Astaires.Cartoon breaths,But too cold for words.The man who coughs,And the last starIn its fixed adventure fading;And so we begin to driftInto the dim scrutinyOf those inner starsOf our mortal navigations.
Longing
It is the lightness of a hawkThat dresses the wind,The tracings foundIn crushed elegies of frost.It is the shade that disappearsInto summer's resinous hum,The sigh contained in all rapt silences,The shudder in the belly of a rose.It is follies of hennaTracing their whimsFrom hand to arm,It is the hesitationsThat we make our walls.
It is affection's shy, insistent cousin,The companion word to the verb, to love,The blessing heldIn the soft benediction of other eyes.It is the slow, consensual, untouching danceThat steers toward the rising of all our tomorrows,And, it is the aching momentThat beginsThe quiet dawning of the heart.
Grant Fraser is a lawyer, poet and filmmaker. His collection of poetry Some Conclusion in the Heart was published by Black Willow Press. His film Syllable to Sound was screened on ABC1.