We Taught the Night.

We taught the night a thing or two

About love. We fought. You hit me

With the palm of your hand and

I traced the shape of your back into the sheets.

We screamed.

You covered yourself up –

First in a nightgown, then in

The darkness. I fumbled for the light but your hands

Were already cupped over it,

And the sad grin of the scars on your fingers

Stopped me from reaching out. We fought for ownership of

Music, beauty, leaves and trees while your room

Nervously rearranged itself around us

Trying its best to keep out of our way until we

Lay in the centre of a stranger.

Your sweat caught itself in the air

And hung lazily around our bodies. We taught

The night a thing or two about love

And when we were done we both knew the

Night would not forget us soon.

And at dawn we sat naked

By the window and tried to remember

What the sun was supposed to do next.

Soft Young Words.

Soft Young Words.

I woke up this morning

To see two birds side by side

On the branch by my window.

Their heads black, twin yellow beaks

Like two scored lines on a page,

Their bodies tense and young,

Ready to take off at the slightest

Gust of wind.

Two perfect birds

As perfect as the last two syllables

You spoke to me.

Morning Promises

Morning Promises.

The morning makes promises with

The meaningless dance of our bodies in the

Orange light –

The way your arm slips through mine

When I bend to put on my socks,

Or the way my hand finds itself in the small of your back

As the kettle hums to itself, absently.

This morning makes promises as our

Bodies slowly and gently work

Around each other, a new sex that

Gives birth to a quiet kind of life

That stretches like a road of smoke

Before my patient feet.

This morning makes promises

With your smile, and the waiting cup

In your hand.

Maybe this time it says.

Maybe this time.

I Want

I Want.

I want to pick the sunshine from my teeth.

I want to find little

Silvery smudges of the moon

In the creases of my newspaper.

I want every single hour to be filled

With useless pretty little things

Like the edges of your mouth when you smile

Or the wet crunch of the rotten apples

Hitting the patio.

I want every day to begin in the golden sunshine

Of mid afternoon

And I want the night to stretch like the ocean

So that when the day is done

We can walk together,

Strip bare

And slip into the rest of our days.

Eulogy by Smoke.

Eulogy by Smoke.

-Written after the bushfires of February, 2009

What is left after the fires?

What do we hold in a handful of

Ash?

What prayer is heavy enough to

Close the eyes of the dead and

The dying?

When flame has gone -

When bodies have planted themselves in the soil

Like seeds waiting for a new

Burst of rain –

What then?

What then

But a place not even poetry

Can fill?

What then but a desparate

Attempt to forget,

To pave over? To rebuild?

But smoke does not forget.

And as our hands desperately work

To fill the places flame left blank

A single rising plume of smoke cuts a line in the sky

And disperses.

Let this be the eulogy

No human tongues

Can utter.

Horse

Horse.

She told me when she was young

Her horse had run onto the tracks –

Too young to have learnt about trains

Or metal

And had died,

Snapped clean in two by the bigger

Stronger metal machine.

And it is this image, perhaps above everything –

A soft brown horse charging towards a steam train –

That keeps me loving her.

Thank You

Thank You.

Her boyfriend, Will, is about to break up with her. She senses it in the way he moves; the way conversations sour over nothing; the way she wakes in the middle of the night and sees the space that once held his body empty, finding him sitting at the dining room table, staring into space. She has loved Will for the last six years, and now he’s leaving her life. He hasn’t said anything - nothing specific - but she can already see him reorganizing his priorities. He’s emptying out the space that once held all of his love for her. She says, one Saturday morning, “let’s get a coffee,” and he says, “you go,” and stares into space. It is happening in slow motion. It makes her feel sick, sick to her stomach, and she can’t even comprehend the enormity of the sadness yet. That will come later. For the time being, she’s in the shadow of this Great Sad Thing, and she’s biting her thumb, and biding her time.

Because it’s all making her feel like she’s going crazy, she decides to meet up with an old friend, Mary, who she has not seen in at least a year. Mary sounds pleased on the phone, eager, promising news. They choose somewhere to have lunch. She hangs up. Will is over in the other corner of the room, and she waits for him to ask who she was talking to. But he doesn’t.

Mary looks beautiful, even more beautiful than she did when they last saw each other, and she moves with the grace of a dancer, even though she isn’t one.

“Actually, it’s funny you called me,” Mary biting her lip a little. “Well. Not funny. Just…A coincidence. I was going to call you, anyway.” Mary looks away, her blue eyes searching for some distant point in the horizon. “I’ve got cancer,” Mary says, and her voice doesn’t break at all when she says it. It hangs well in the air of the restaurant. Strong, and definite. Mary says, “I’ve got cancer in my bones.”

She doesn’t know what to say. She shakes her head, once, twice, and then feels herself starting to cry. Mary looks sad, but resilient, like a rock in a great expanse of water. Alone, but not lonely. She touches Mary’s hand, and when that is not enough, she begins to cry.

And it is as she is crying that something comes to her, suddenly. It is a thought. It is what she could only describe as an ‘opportunity’. Suddenly, in her head, a scenario unfurls. This evening, she will go home. Will sitting there, in the living room, waiting for her to walk in the door. And when she does, he will rise, bad news hiding behind his lips, and he will clear his throat and he will say –

“Let’s talk.”

But she will not let him. She will say, her voice breaking; “Mary has cancer.”

And Will’s face will derail. He will be lost for words. He does not know Mary well at all; only from old stories, and awkward conversations at parties, but he knows the significance of the wordcancer. And he will console her, as she cries, and he will cook for her, and listen in comfortable, open silence – unashamed – as she describes Mary’s strength, and the exact depth and breadth of the cancer in her bones. Later, he will even take her to bed, laying her gently in the sheets. He will say something like,

“let’s sleep,”, and his voice will wash over her like music. And he won’t smoke, because it would be obscene to do so, and he will leave the computer switched off, dormant. He will lay with her. And maybe that will be the moment. No, not maybe. She is sure of it now. That will be the moment of closeness that catches him unawares. That closeness he has cut himself off from over the last few months – he will suddenly find himself becoming the man who loves her, once again. It won’t just be the physical act of being that hard pressed against each other that changes his mind. It’ll be thereal closeness too, the closeness of lovers when their love becomes transparent. When it becomes hard, like glass, and uncomplicated. He will look down on her, and that closeness will flood his heart; she will be asleep, or pretending to sleep, and he will gaze down upon her face, and this uncomplicated love will seize him by the throat.

She looks up at Mary. She is still crying, but less so now, the tears streaking her make up.

She says, “Mary…” But Mary cuts her off.

“That’s alright,” Mary says. “Honestly. It will all be okay.”

She looks at Mary’s strong, powerful face. She has been given a gift, in this moment, she has been saved, and she has to bite her lip, really bite it, because all she wants to say to Mary is something so simple. So essential. So true.

All she wants to say is thank you.