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Rob Schackne #6 – Home Before Daylight

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Home Before Daylight

Fallen, whether failure or loss
the centre never held, now
that your name is invisible
the numbers are many—

dirty jackets, unscrubbed faces
getting home before daylight
sunflowers without any sun
screaming at what isn’t there

watching the short ride
fast approach the ground—
good that you have company
good the dark one’s not interested

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Rob Schackne #3 – The River

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The River

Today he wrote a river
its eddies wore strange marks
on a flowing page, boulders
semi-submerged like hymns
the banks were huge, the plains
went on for miles of words
oddly discernible, then not—
balanced an enormous sphere
that was empty of meaning
overseeing the asemic, but
not nothing, not nothing there
a peace, a better silence
we wrote it together.

Drawing “Oggi ho scritto un fiume” by Enzo Patti (2021)

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a door in the day – for Lou Smith

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a door in the day

for Lou Smith

 

none thought to lock

 

bring the bones

come flesh

 

do come in

you’re welcome

 

say I, the inhabited fancy

 

step through the city

take this pill, melt  

 

a fall of sunlight here

just where the day grows over

 

come seasons, turn

roller skates

 

prepare me a piano please

or any strings at all

                                                                            

not to show you

just to say

the only way

to make the door

is to open it

and step in 

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Beyond (in response to Papa Osmubal’s mixed media work ‘Doors to Both Worlds’) – Lou Smith

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Will you still write to me, when you are gone?
Which door shall I open to find you?
a skeleton key    mellifluous song
not milled from nickel and silver     
will your breath still cloud in the cold, cold air,
for a moment as if we are gods?
s
  w
    o
      o
        p 
            low from silhouette of buildings
            
to beyond

Beyond (in response to Papa Osmubal’s mixed media work ‘Doors to Both Worlds’) – Lou Smith Read More »

the recent burials

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 Inspired by  ‘Is this the Azure Kingfisher’ Sarah St Vincent Welch


the recent burials

 

last year it was a friend’s dog

old fella still warm

her child’s best friend

one of her family

bundled and wrapped

 

we were weak

the soil clay

we smiled at just how weak

we were 

 

my cracking body 

could still pick axe  

with a shallow swing

chisel head drag

into fractured rock

 

we made a superficial grave

anchored it with broken bricks 

 

La Niña keened over Queanbeyan

we talked on the verandah

the wind rattled the carport loose

we remembered that a fox 

tried to dig up the bird

that drowned in our lazy rain-filled bucket

the bird grave in our front garden


today a felled cockatoo

beside the road

her yellow crest still raised

we saw her at dusk

 

we dug by torchlight

remembered

 

how the cockies talked to us

when we visited this house

swinging upside down

us looking up to hear

just who do you think you are,

who?

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