Selected poems
tomatoes
you fade into the hospital white
above your head a row of floral Hallmark cards
as a husband’s garden once filled every available
backyard space with colour
the glasshouse arrived after retirement
& the run of chooks from neighbour’s fence
to neighbour’s fence
the breadth a quarter acre of block saving labour
you only had to build one side & cut a gate
& bring it down after a son left home
the window offers no view
but in the addled wisdom of over ninety years
a cruise ship drifts a flicker of something missed
as new owners would grow
in a legacy of thick rich soil staked against the back fence
tomatoes tasting like tomatoes
harbour
To arrive in the most Australian of cities
& sit at Martin Place
an hour after the ANZAC march
smoke a cigarette
the absent father
his medals still in the top draw
Pubs tiled to the eves
a clink of a new language
for drinking on the pavement
A street scape hangs
between a sound & light & prayer
in the alfoil hollow of ourselves darkness
Each terrace has a plaque
a history of nursing hedged in & clinging
an edge of wailing on an edge of view
Small bowls long beers & cigarettes
against the gathering crowds
This mad big blustering city
hands on its hips hustling the wind
staring out to sea
Harbour ripples dreams
table cloths, tea towels & boomerangs
High vis & one dollar coffee
building a city out of a city
the wind is all gesture & tamed
To the beaches perched between bush & cliffs
jewellery & ferry spray
a march of limbs against the Pacific of our lives
Waves build & flounder
a suburb of things to do romance rushes
palms around the first beer of the day
post grunge trellising vines to the roof of the world
streets turn themselves inside out
where a post code is a haiku
& there is shopping
the department stores are all new season
& there is not a cloud in the sky
I have been here three days
& already have given others wrong direction twice
A weave of lanes & a spread of sand
tumbling water pushed between headlands
an unsocked toe dips o so gently into surf
The hum of the afternoon
strollers take up half the footpath
curve & swerve & cars backed up
& a shop sells four hundred dollar shoes
There is a heart beating here
a commerce of breath
a sleeper on the boardwalk
a foam over our eyes
neighbourhoods & icons
a bridge & an opera house gifts for the new life
A diver’s toes curl over the block
a spring faith threaded plunge
as a needle would sew a seam between day & night
Rory Harris teaches at CBC Wakefield Street, South Australia.