Swimmer

 

You saunter over sand on seagull legs;

stand a moment in waist-high water,

and like the seagulls, appraise the seascape.

 
You slide your inherited strong arms

into the sea’s soft folds,

and swim easily out into the blue of Byron Bay;

you, alone out there on a Spring morning,

the wings of the sun lighting your body.

My arms remember they held you,

the chubby nine-month-old,

in the Canberra swimming pool.

You kicked and clawed

into a love for water,

the beginning of swimming competence.

Later the schoolboy race.

The family bent over the pool ledge and shouted

you on. You nearly won;

then we lost you for years to unknown waters,

in unknown places.

 

New from your stay at Recovery

you swim into the increasing deep,

above the marine graveyard of skulls and spines

where sharks might wish and weave.

 

I relax when you curve back to us,

people of the land,

where we can hold each other in body stillness,

and where you can replant,

all of you to regrow

in earth’s forgiving, resilient soil.

 

(prizewinner) Caroline Glen © September 09

Tasmanian Tiger

 

We stop, hushed. The dusk air ripples

with a gentleness, for we see you, old man,

lying still in your black and white striped suit,

under an ancient moon, close to an ancient forest.

 

You hear our footsteps, smell our woman heat.

With inherent trust you raise

your huge grey-muzzled head, lips loose

over teeth that once tore heads from sheep.

 

You stand and stare at us.

We two wilderness wanderers ignore

our loaded cameras and say,

old man you won’t live another winter.

Soon, the forest will blanket you with its leaves.

Birds will sing your death and dance on your grave.

Their scarecrow legs will lattice you

in a farewell of love.

Insects will work your flesh and clean your bones.

You will never again hear the farmer’s gun.

 

We say, old man, we forget the reward;

and promise no human limbs will stretch to you,

no cage limbs will restrain you.

No voices will alarm you.

With haunches low, you trail your long tail, slow,

back to the Tasmanian forest that breathes

in its limbs mysteries of your ancestry

and incurable illness.

 

We wait. We do not follow.

 

(Prizewinner) Caroline Glen ©

Joanna

 

We grew through our shoes at the same school.

She later grew into classy clothes.

I watched her at home, kneeling,

smoothing material, pinning patterns, scissors poised,

cutting.

 

I ignored advice not to visit. ‘No point’ they said.

But friendship without jealousy endures,

and though the threads between us had weakened,

I needed to strengthen them……….

 

From the door I easily recognise her.

She sits on a chair, thinner, looks ahead,

(at what?). I kiss her, sit beside her on a cramped chair.

She turns, smiles, and asks ‘What’s your name’?

Neck hollowed, her fleshless shoulder bone

points at mine, it seems, with accusation.

They almost touch.

 

Her brown hair, sprinkled grey, is pudding-basin cut.

She wears a tee shirt, slacks.

No more boutique-browsing for Joanna.

No more travelling.

Her last home here, with men and women,

their backs curved, wearing slow shoes

and silence in their eyes.

 

They sit semi-circled to the bay window

and through the glass watch their daily movie -

tree-leaves in constant performance,

directed by the Christchurch breezes,

written from scripts created by the universe.

 

I give Joanna a present;

a small, white bowl decorated with red roses.

Head bowed, slowly, carefully,

she turns it around and around, over and over,

hoping to touch the magic that will unclasp its lid.

 

Next to her a woman knits, arms poised

across her ample chest. ‘Come daily,’ she explains,

‘hubby takes me home after work.’

She rests her knitting for morning tea,

drinks, eats her biscuits, eats Joanna’s.

 

The Asian carers care.

They move catlike over the large home’s carpet squares

and floorboards.

‘Come with me Joanna,’ one purrs.

She leans to her, takes her arm,

helps lift her from her wet towel,

guides her down the passage to the bathroom.

The radio above our heads plays familiar songs.

No-one sings.

 

Occasionally I talk to Joanna’s ear - family, what they are doing,

schoolfriends, what they are doing.

She sometimes turns to my face with a Mona Lisa smile.

After two hours I kiss her goodbye,

linger at the door, look back.

Tack-stitched into her chair, Joanna still strokes the bowl.

My name waits on a Flight List.

I don’t know when I’ll return.

I close the door resolved to remember a young woman,

bottom up, laughing into a mouthful of pins.

 

Caroline Glen ©

country visit

We drive up through hills sliced fresh and deep

by sharp knives, precision-cut by man.

Wounded clay, gold and grey, like coarse flour,

clings to the hills. It still breathes through the hills’ tissue,

mother all its life.

 

A few road-stones lie cast in delayed shock.

We drive down through smaller hills. They confront

like plump washerwomen, stilled in scrub and chatter,

clean from rain-wash and sun-bleach,

bellies aproned in patterned shadow.

 

The flat land invites like a pokerplayer

laying a quick, winning hand, displaying uneven numbers

of gum trees reaching to the horizon,

white cattle and sheep on a dark canvas,

fists of sugar cane, a threading river.

 

We present gifts and ourselves at the home of friends.

We talk and walk on yellow earth down a creek

where dragonflies write invitations on the creek’s black ink.

 

Behind our eyes lie the city’s magic.

There we put on new dresses, new shoes,

and think we are princesses.

Nature doesn’t care about dresses, shoes

or princesses.

She says wear what you wish. Just come to me

with a noble and generous mind,

stripped of pretension.

 

Carolilne Glen ©

by the Brisbane river

 

Sometimes we need no words,

only our thoughts;

and just the two of us, quiet by the river.

 

Older now, we sit on a bench and watch

our formless reflections in the water.

They remind us of the insignificance

of many past anxieties.

 

Fat and confident, the Cats hurry past.

We have no hurry.

 

The moon swings to earth an invisible rope

that will never break.

She tells us we will live to praise her

tomorrow.

 

On the bank opposite,

lights from the crowded city buildings

will soon dance on the water.

They will remind us of technologies to come

we will never use.

We hold hands; the strength between,

our compensation.

 

(Prize-winner) Caroline Glen ©

Walnut Tree

 

I lie on the bed in a thin dress and watch

the morning sun,

after a week of rain, colour the grey walls cream,

and soften the air into a cream warmth.

 

Soon I will walk the street to the sea,

slide through its white mouths to roll

on its blue gums.

 

I will lie on sand the colour of corn

and watch the joggers pressing their bodies’ breath

through their limbs,

and the lips of the sea opening and closing

over the irrepressible complacency of sand.

 

Then a walnut tree, its ponderous branches,

its generosity of leaves,

rises though the brambles of my mind.

Beneath it, amongst a riot of leaves, lie mature brown

walnuts, young hazel walnuts,

and baby walnuts still moist-wrapped

in their green blankets.

 

And see a child in coat and gumboots bending

her small back.

She stamps on the nuts,

loosens the flesh from the shells and chews

their hard, white flesh.

The bitter, rebellious flavour lingers on her tongue,

the juices stain her fingers.

She puts some nuts in her pocket for after.

 

I realise in all these years in this beloved country

I have never stood beneath a walnut tree

and remembered,

and wonder if, in these wearing-out days,

I should return to the land of that walnut tree,

 

and with skin whipped clean from the pitched winds

of the Alps, search for the walnut-wrinkled faces

my childhood knew and together pluck brown walnuts from cosseting leaves,

eat them, and lick the stains from our fingers;

the children of who we were, before the adult theft

of what we became.

 

Caroline Glen ©

Aged Ulysses

 

My ship, rocks in the harbour below,

stripped of my men.

My bones lie lazy like my ship’s boards.

My knees creak like their joints.

My flesh grows tired. My muscles sulk.

 

At dusk I curl on my mat on weeping grass

that grows no poem or song.

The rocks hold still with fortitude and hate.

I honour the sun, moon and stars

but they cannot ignite my perverse strength

that trails me in shadow.

 

Day slides its arms into the grey coat of night

I would I could wear it; and reach to own

people I met, places known. They are part of me.

I am part of them.

 

I come each day to the cliffs to see my ship.

The ocean haunts me, ever the bride on her

wedding night. I envy her passions. I long

to ride her again, feel her energies beneath me;

to ride her with my men, their chests burgeoning

with wild air to slay the enemy on their vessels,

to watch them drown in creaming seas.

 

My men wander idle on this island. They eat,

they whore. Their minds are soft like the clouds,

their blood flavourless.

How selfish my life. You sit with me, old woman

your flesh still ripe in desire for me;

you who weaved and waited twenty years,

pursued by mean suitors, your eyes then bluer

than sky, skin paler than the moon, lips redder

than berries.

 

But I long for that hot needle that once laced

stitches of lust through my groins, that spread

colours of power through my body.

I long for the determination I pasted in flat parchment

on my brow.

 

I long for that strength that oversang the tease

and temptations of the singing Sirens

floating half-naked through sky.

They pouted their lips, wiped my face with their hair.

They sullied my sails’ tendons

that wrapped me to my mast where my men

had bound me.

 

In memory I still flail those wanton arms and suck the air

for knowledge of my countrymen’s battles.

I shout with the ocean for the Gods to grant me wisdom,

and to captain once more my ship of conflict.

 

Caroline Glen © September 09