Meaning is what we make of it.
What it makes of us.
Slow Motion
the blow of a hairdryer due north
fastens me damp to this seat.
heavy, I swear I smell red dirt.
there’s no end in sight,
only bright suns every day on the news.
my children cranky
my husband and I too tired to touch –
it’s Fringe, Festival, nightly, in Adelaide:
fast paced slow motion.
someone told me in passing it was autumn.
autumn?
true.
yesterday in a souvenir shop
(gifts for my nieces in North America)
I saw the Festival Centre inside a snow globe.
snow?
no,
wouldn’t happen.
but dreams are what children make them
and here I am, imagining a giant hairdryer.
it’s dreams like this that make me an insomniac.
half in and out of sleep
half in and out of covers
nine nights
got to sleep
should buy myself the snow globe.
an American autumn carries coloured leaves
and here I find a twisted comfort
as nine days of this sun
have turned these leaves
to yellow burnt and dead crisp brown.
my hairdryer blew them to the ground.
people talk, background buzz.
I only tunnel-vision this:
close your eyes and dream that smell
(fall’s guidance toward winter snow)
flip this country upside down
watch it fall soft and white
upside down
slow motion.
Two Trees
One: Slowly Growing in Understanding
I yearn for the commitment of the Pine
rising to where crisp is a layer of sky
sunlight gently multiplied
on each green blade.
I lie in the shade.
Now, combine tiny purple petals
with rain and the fresh
dung of a deer;
you will smell it.
Strong like my father.
Difficult to climb.
Two: Tribute
The Eucalyptus spreads itself
with twists only it comprehends
and the tips of its limbs
reach toward the space
where its own scented breath flows.
Inhale –
watercolours brought to life by breezes shifting clouds.
Exhale –
sun-flickered leaves like a symphony of fingered rims
and Semillon.
I fit my back to the white of its wood.
I welcome children and animals.
Split
I claim Elvis
hips and lips and that whole generation
and Beale Street, gospel, rock and blues –
hell, I’ll claim the Mississippi River too
and if we’ve made our way on down the Gulf
I take Cinco de Mayo because Americans know
how to cook beans
that sit somewhere between firm and soft
and we say ‘quesadilla’ properly
so then throw in Blackspeak and Native art
because I spent my childhood in the deep south
my twenties in the desert
and man I seen oppression
through the window of my Ford Tempo
so there is a sort of kinship in my us and them
and yeah, the destruction of the Twin Towers
(but not Bush, neither of them)
and the monumental loss
the Grand Canyon and the Rocky Mountains
and the monumental space
and the open road, every diner
the ever-present fizz of Coke
so you might as well put me at a baseball game
because I claim that too
(you see I don’t get cricket or meat pies)
but I do so love the Australian twang
of my child’s emphatic ‘no(y)’
the way my man slips on his worn leather Hard Yakka boots
to split our winter wood
and the smell of the sea, how it drifts to me
wherever I am when dusk clears its perfect throat
and floats over the city’s red roofs
and seeps between the gum nut trees
and the way we rejoice in a morning rain
these monumental things.
The Water Poems…
In between
I make my prayer to those who, like Indra,
ever delight in much drink—
– Rig Veda
I
Eleven o’clock.
Morning comes in a heat wave
through the cracked window of our room
waking me unwillingly, but what can you do
when it’s already ninety-two?
Your body sticks to me like my own sweat—
a certain thirty percent proof.
Drank too
Smoked much
Loved too much last night.
Your eyelashes flutter as I lift myself
to begin again.
My lungs are angry, of vulgar voice
grinding and grating and spitting syllables
of I-told-you-sos, still
I search the last cigarette under clothes
scented with neglected bodies, under meager
paycheck stubs we were eager to cash,
under newspapers from last month’s scandal.
Is the United States still at war?
Your breath moans in a dream
as I open the door.
The eleven o’clock morning
awakes with stale smells
of beer and here and over there
are last night’s leftover bodies
drowning in last night’s memories
and ashtrays spilling with last night’s
deep and meaningfuls;
cans and bottles
the implements of wonderment
of last night’s merriment.
I climb over clutter, uncaring
who is who or what it is.
The eleven o’clock morning
spreads through the kitchen
like the heat that seeps through the floors
and under the doors and somehow drips
from the ceiling.
Upstairs you flutter and the bodies clutter.
I cling to cleaning so tonight we may begin again.
II
A summer day.
Can we waste our lives away if only
for today? It is one o’clock.
Blow up the raft and I’ll make the drink
call it Soma, because intoxication was worshipped once
when heat was drier and religion
was higher and debauchery was sane.
Careful hands, an artful heart and a bottle of Golden Grain;
cherries floating, watermelon sinking and oranges
splashing color. So float down the Chattahoochee
with me in your arms and the water at your feet
and Soma in a plastic green jug
as the city climbs in a dreamy haze,
Atlanta so lazy in soggy heat.
It’s best if we stay off the crowded street.
Float down the Chattahoochee with me
because it’s best on water in a city in a sauna
and if we become blurry like the skies in our eyes
let’s stick together. I’d so hate to drown
in this blistering town in the river that runs
through pine trees and factories.
Let Soma bind us in revelry,
let revelations come gently, so gently
gently pushing us
to begin again.
III
There’s too much light in your eyes
on our drive down Interstate 95.
It’s five o’clock in the afternoon;
let’s eat at the neighborhood lake.
A few drops of Soma for our sun-dried tomato
and black olive pie.
The sun will leave just as my hair will dry
and I will wipe the light from your eye.
Seven-thirty evening
and the lake laced with corroded condoms
and bottle ships floating on a forgotten mystery
of mallards and water – where has the time gone?
With Soma somewhere.
Somewhere with Soma.
In the car we copulate because there is no time
and surely the heat waited long through the year
surely the light waited quiet through the night
surely Soma waited in its jug
but there is no time for us to wait
so in the car we copulate.
We do it. We fuck.
We fuck.
IV
Let’s enter our house and sleep in our bed among the clothes
and crumpled notes and newspapers we should have recycled
with the bottles and the cans I recycled this morning
at eleven o’clock.
And we sleep. And we dream.
V
The night wakes me with the moon in our room.
Your eyelashes flutter
and I kiss them in the shadow.
The sun is gone
and it’s cool now.
I hear footsteps at the entrance of our house.
They come in pairs to play that game—
the one with colored balls that goes so well
with green bottles lining green felt.
Did I tell you that your eyes make me melt
like the sun on my skin in the heat
on the raft at one o’clock this afternoon?
Too bad we lost the green ball
and use another red instead.
I lose you when they come in pairs,
when the house fills with smoke
and my ears loud with jokes.
Did you hear the one about the Jewish porn star?
Hardy hardy fucking har.
If I could find you I would make you mine
on the cold bathroom tile where we would defile
the Comet that makes the bathroom smell so good.
VI
Tomorrow.
There is tomorrow
like there was today.
There is no rain in Adelaide
Hundreds of pure drops of water beat
into the summer bucket, the red
and cumbersome impossible to avoid
bucket scraping her calves. it nudges,
communicates with sobriety each time
she showers.
*
one red bucket in clamped wet hand
and the sun caustic on this particular day
and the naked woman from the shower
naked in the sunshine hot
sunshine drying hair and skin
naked burning soles of feet
tip toe hops too fast.
Splash! almost a smack on the skin
of the hard concrete
and the ants dive in.
time enough to reflect
cringe, dip feet (brief reprieve)
then walk on to the garden.
it may be small or powerful, relativity in its place,
but redemption reigns in the waterfall
from the red shower bucket:
naked woman squints and steams,
the zucchini plant breathes.
Hemispheres Apart
North America.
Winter crouches over fall
and will always have its way.
Today was that day.
As I walked to the waterfall thinking about ice
wishing it colder because I had heard
of non-gravity snubbing a mid-stream flow,
the rain invaded.
Through windblown pellets and stinging skin
fingers numbing and mood going sour
I decided ice might be too cold
for the waterfall, for me.
And I resented it:
the rain.
Water slowly down the drain in the rental cabin shower.
The steam has settled on mirrors and walls.
My back arches in prayer
to the Goddess of Heat
and other large things
and I am unashamed of my indulgence
in the elements of water and fire
and the earth and the air
from which they came
because after the rain
my body begged extended warmth
and this was not Australia.
I eyes-shut smile and whisper wicked
so much water
so far from home
disassociation key.
Water
I gulped Lake Tahoe by mistake,
just swimming and breathing
it can easily happen
and clear,
have you ever tasted clear?
I rinsed my hair in a mountain creek,
his hand splashing the cold of it between my thighs
and the shock of it;
how quickly the relief.
We paddled in the Ozarks
where humidity drips from trees
and blends into the horizon
and the river
a gentle reminder
that the afternoon can be endless.
I could have drowned in Pacific waves
jumping fast into water and foam
and seconds of disorientation
but, addicted, I rose desperate for air
just to jump again.
Three days we lived in the lake
just down the hill
from our tent
past the sunflowered meadow,
our children naked as fish.
There is rain in Adelaide
There is rain in Adelaide, set in.
The streets no longer run to town
but in the direction of gutters.
Must have felt it coming
when last night I turned to you
and from our sleep…
I’m in love!
the rain!
in Adelaide!
lasting all summer day
lifting our worries our earthbound fears
and filling fat our water tanks
so every bucket overflows
and blesses the green green growth below.
We are smiling in the kitchen
embracing in the hallway.
We dance to the beat of ten thousand drums
pounding on our thin tin roof.
All Things Big
The lake was enormous
and you but a man in an old canoe with only a single paddle.
Fire flicker blurred peripheral and boiled broad bean stew;
snowmelt ripples blurred your wake, parenthesising my insecurities.
The green mountain before you – enormous – frightened me.
The image of you moving toward leaving me behind
your shirtless back in confidence
the colour of your sunburn
the dusk, the stillness, the midnight sun,
silent moments of one man’s truth
and my imagination – enormous.
What I saw in the swirl of the smoke was an aisle seat empty
on the plane ride home and you, having reached that mountain.
Every moral in all the fables would then be yours.
The poems would be mine.
Settling
Outside and the blue below,
forming and vanishing slits of white:
the Pacific Ocean.
Always that moment
deep into the fifth hour
going on the eighth
when a settling has overcome
my upright seated body.
My eyes rest on nothing
but space through the rounded window
and the air is measured into fractions
of slow streams of manufactured
and faster streams of recycled
so the act of breathing
becomes efficient and ultimately sedating:
sleep encouraged,
jet lag a bitch.
Must be heavy, the middle of the ocean
so thickly seen from such a distance,
the idea of weight and water unsettling
that settling in my bones.
And deep into that liminal space of Home
and home, where definitions interchange
depending on which memory sticks
with momentary greater force
there is falling,
something slight though real enough
falling in my gut.
I’m thinking hard metal crashing liquid
death and sink but no pain
my body floating
the outside inside
the cabin a wreck of salt water
and bodies, fodder for fish.
I smile out the window. I settle.
Think that it would be fitting
to be buried somewhere between;
no earth has ever been mine to claim.
Lemonade
There are places where time rests a little longer.
I wore ponytails, had unshaved legs, my problems
were small and monumental.
I seemed to sing pop songs all day long.
There is a portable snack stand at a beach
a backyard with a jungle gym
a picnic in a wooded park
freshly squeezed lemonade.
The newly dug lemon tree with a border of pebbles
in the shape of a heart is Matilda’s.
One day I will tell her
of a pre-pubescence I once inhabited
with painted signs: LEMONADE 5 CENTS
and the jugs lined up
in a pretty yellow row.
And when she is older
it will be the weight of the ease
of the mix of pure water with lemon
and sugar that will teach her simplicity.
I will tell her to squint away squirts of juice
that will shoot from lemons into her eyes