Thorny fingers of the Rose
Clutch at tilted rotting timbers.
Wilted flowers perching pose
For attention there they linger.
Yet no jaunting love admires
Nor any bird is heard to sing -
The full maturity of Autumn
Has effaced all hues of Spring.
Once vivaciously abloom, alas,
Now melancholy stays.
Yearning eyes will wander, lost
In the Garden of Dismay.
The Love Chair
The woodworker walks the stand of camphor laurel. She knows
the trees' passion: their leaves as familiar as her hands; their
growth as tranquil as the evolution of her love.
She dreams green's rubric: trees one-and-a-half women
high; the air showered with wheatgrass-green leaves; a
branch as thick as her forearm on the ground.
Mystery guides her hands. Her fingers circle the axe's
solid handle & the blade arcs through the air. The axe's
bit, its sharp edge, reveals the white wood.
She had good days and bad days, and from the moment she opened her eyes that morning she knew it was going to be a struggle. She was tired, as always, but there was something deeper, a heavy feeling in her stomach, a whisper of some indescribable sense that she recognised as the cloud returning. Her vision was narrow, and no matter how slow and deep she inhaled, she couldn’t seem to get enough air.
You show up in Parnawarratji and try to arrange the single loop of sealed road, the vacant red dirt lots and the dotted housing with massive metal cages on the front, into a ‘community’ in your mind. It isn’t what you were expecting, but then, you didn’t know what to expect. Certainly not so much sky, arcing over the horizon, the line blurred by a hazy fringe of spinifex grass.
His face was trapped in the ceiling tiles above my computer. I stared at the roof, feeling the bile rise up in my throat. I hadn’t noticed it at first. The line on the bottom could have been anyone’s smile, and the two black dots among the white plaster could have been anyone’s eyes. But after he had leaned over my desk the first time, shouting at me, I stared at the ceiling tile straight afterwards and ever since pictured the outline of his face every time I looked at it.
The maps lied. Distances between towns had to be longer. I drove the minivan dangling an elbow out a window. A bone in my neck grated as I changed gears. Wind cut bluntly over an arm. After long trips skin mottled red. Land lay flat, stretching into haze smeared by dust storms two days ago. My shoulders ached slightly from that full nelson Eric had me in yesterday.
She had good days and bad days, and from the moment she opened her eyes that morning she knew it was going to be a struggle. She was tired, as always, but there was something deeper, a heavy feeling in her stomach, a whisper of some indescribable sense that she recognised as the cloud returning. Her vision was narrow, and no matter how slow and deep she inhaled, she couldn’t seem to get enough air.
You show up in Parnawarratji and try to arrange the single loop of sealed road, the vacant red dirt lots and the dotted housing with massive metal cages on the front, into a ‘community’ in your mind. It isn’t what you were expecting, but then, you didn’t know what to expect. Certainly not so much sky, arcing over the horizon, the line blurred by a hazy fringe of spinifex grass.
