Poems

Past time, maintains the broken clock. It isn’t off, not by a minute. Without a tick, without a tock, Past time, maintains the broken clock. Twice every day, those still hands mock the present, but they’re never in it. Past time, maintains the broken clock, It isn’t off, not by a minute.

The same window sticks. I push hard and sometimes it gives, lets in a distant sea, a child’s laughter in the waves. Mostly I can’t decipher the songs on the locked baby grand. Death has stolen their keys. The metronome still works. I slide its weight to the end, watch it pole-vault back and fore across the chasm between each tock. The sea rolls closer, the child laughs louder. Mother, father and sister sing to him from the shore.

He felt brave, capable and full of duty He went out with the rest of them and scoured the high grass And the tide-step and low sandy grass He saw how early morning on the river had its beauty They spread out in a loose crescent form Each man could hear the other’s high rubber boots Squeak like rats where the floppy boots Twitched the tall common reeds lightly and moved on Wading birds woke up in a gust of running Out of the way of the new monstrous movement too near And he didn’t any longer want to be near The water, grasses, birds, or whatever was coming No one stumbled on anything, they all went home She wasn’t found that day or any day that ordinary summer Of small cold rain showers and wet sun, a summer That had its useless.

Night is returning to teatime. Soon a coneof orange streetlight will be all he has to see her byas she touches her laurel, steps inside her homeon which he’s been keeping an eye while she’s at work, as no one else will.Only the postie or Amazon opens that gateand once he saw the latter with a parceltoo big to fit through the letterbox, knock, wait the stipulated minute or so, knock harder,step back, look up to blank windows for clues,check his handheld, try next-door – no answeralso – and finally make the walk of doom back to the white Transit. Adrenalin pumping,he considered intervention, but how?‘Did you need – sure, I live opposite, I’ll take it in…’He’d learn her name; teatime would bring her round.

Busy little hammer on your block of wood,dark wine setting the house on fire,how diligently you work, how tirelessly, what scant attention I have given youtill now, unveiled – ba-boom –inside your tiny shed on a screen before surgery that will slow you almost to standstill.In an antenatal room, twice,I saw my daughters’ hearts tucked in below mine, and listened as your pink bouquetfell softly open, closed again.Through the clinic windows, winter darkness shuffles slowly in. The cardiologist is ticking offhis checklist, night is ringing its bells,the echo of their tolling bounces off the walls: busy little hammer on your block of wood,how perfectly compatible we are,how I’ll love you until that final nail.

Bad dreams ignoredlit raindrops on windows of the midnight busthen a footstep behind you like the girl on a Sydney beachwho picked up a tiny blue-ringed octopusmost dangerous creature in the seafor a selfie. It rested in the cup of her hand one small jelly spidertwo legs folded underas if it were on its knees praying.

The past is unzipped, like the backseat loverloosening your tie. You were crazy about himin June, sleeping past noon in the grass,singing all night out of tune. By Septemberhe’d split, without so much as a goodbye kiss. It’s tough to be the one who’s ditched, the scrub who gets bumped from the nest.  Now you’re adrift in the city, its brick pilesblotting out sky; you’re not fit for this life, the sulky drama of the street. You want to killthe taste on your tongue; green fairy, bitter pill,whatever gets you by. Clouds mass as the curtain rises on the last act,you know already how it ends.

What Martine had learned in acting school over the summer,about tone, emphasis, inference,is all useful in the con —herself as charming, consoling Ms. Real Estate Agent.Martine’s clientele — flush widowerswanting to sell the family home,move to a manageable apartment. Walking through the properties,noting brand name dresses hanging in wardrobes,pearl necklaces lying on bedroom dressers,a diamond ring in a no longer used ashtray…Martine tries not to grin, show her hyena teeth. She lets two – or three – months elapse…then when the widower’s out on the golf course,or hospitalised, in for a hip replacement,or wintering in Florida,Martine disables security cameras, alarms, gains entry.The clean sweep of valuables fills a laundry sack.