Tuesday Poem - 'Fickle' by Beth Spencer

Fickle

At Anglesea Park my new friends
invite themselves to lunch
but don't bring a thing.
(Where's the manners in that?)

Their eyes follow each loaded fork

but when I offer carrot and salad,

after an initial flurry of excitement, they decline.

They peer shyly across the wooden picnic table

leaving me to carry the bulk of the conversation.

Then one gets up on the table top showing off

orange dancing shoes. Another ruffles a white pelisse.

A third creeps a little closer, confidingly,

on the seat beside me (enthralled by my story).

Until a car pulls up

and paper cups of hot chips emerge

(with a couple wrapped around them)

and suddenly I'm alone.

I had the good fortune to be on a panel with Beth Spencer at the
Newcastle Writers Festival recently. Oh, it has been so many years

since we were at the week-long Five Islands Press workshop down in

Wollongong. And an equal joy to read her new book 'Vagabondage'

(UWA Publishing) which is as light as a breeze, and dark as a buried bone,

and it tells you the whole sad story – without boring you for a minute.

Quite a feat that. Quite a coup. My only conundrum was which one to

choose for my blog. Spoilt for choice. Couldn't pick between them.

So I went for a trip to Frankston to take my library books back and

told myself something would happen that would help me choose.

And there was a woman in a car with the window rolled down and a tub

of hot chips – and a hundred hundred avian friends clustering around.

http://uwap.uwa.edu.au/products/vagabondage

Now available as a kindle ebook at Amazon -- http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00URD7558
Or visit Beth's website at www.bethspencer.com

Tuesday Poem - 'When he read the poem in the room above the stairs' by John Jenkins

When he read the poem in the room above the stairs

1.

When he read the poem in the room above the stairs,

the walls had been repainted and a new skylight put in.

As he looked to see that his pages were in order,

he noticed old photographs of people – older poets

that he had once known – had been removed,

and a glass-topped bench with vases on it.

The approach from the lane, a mirror still on the stairs,

and when he glanced, had hardly recognised himself.

As he began to read, the poem had stayed

exactly the same as always, not a comma or a character

or pause had ever been replaced. And, as his voice

rose to meet it, he realised how little ever changed.

He was still himself, for better or worse. As always,

the audience sat courteously, still listening, and fragile.

Whether full or empty, the room was just a room.

2.

When he read the poem in the room above the stairs,

he imagined it was full of blind people, and it was hard

to read their expressions. So many dark glasses, black

as the shiny coffee served here. He rubbed his eyes.

He knew he'd have to discard the poem he once thought balanced

and complete, and continued in a brave, quiet panic.

At which point the room filled with light, which dazzled

off the walls and lit up cups. It shot sharp lances

from the sides of things, so intense it made his eyes well

with tears. He thanked the room, which had shrunk in the glare

to the size of a pinhole. Putting the thought away, he smiled.

3.

When he read the poem in the room above the stairs

people felt they could hear things they had forgotten.

As he read, and they listened, his voice reached out

across the space, or was suspended in the air. Beyond

the room, he remembered wind and rain, sighs shot through

with longing, sounds climbing like some impossibly high staircase

of emotion, that was not his and seemed to belong to no one.

The audience, in contrast, heard sounds of journeys never made.

As he read, all these things could slip away, back into silence:

they were accounted for, and finally done. The poem returned

to absence where words had been, a listening without regret.

So he raised his voice, and looked down where a girl

was doodling the word more in a cold winter's morning.

But it was summer now, and the room flashed past, shuddering,

as if at speed, merging into other words not yet written.

He read until the poem was entirely given away. At the end

of this, he knew it was not raining outside, and could not be.

He would always be in this room. Had always been, forever.

Beside him, another self sat and wondered. At last, he sipped

his coffee, sailed out, still listening carefully. Below the stairs,

out in the air, found the marvellous street and sun.

I didn't know this poem was by John Jenkins when I first read it.

I was judging the Melbourne Poets Union's annual competition

in 2013 and of course I was looking for a winner. There were

five or six contenders, but this poem bent me all out of shape

with its magic, and the more I read it, the more it thrilled me.

So easy-peasy, I had a winner. And then I found out it was by

John, who I had met here and there around the traps but I

wouldn't have said I knew him, or his work. Now I know him

a lot better.

For his bio and poems from his most recent book Growing Up

With Mr Menzies (John Leonard Press 2008) check out this link.

http://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/jenkins-john

 

Tuesday Poem - 'Pink Forget-Me-Not' by Jennifer Compton

Pink Forget-Me-Not

It's a sport — she said.

Don't plant it near the blue

it'll breed back.

She shrugged. It'll breed back

anyway, they always do.

One season wonders.

I put it in a splendid isolation

game and pink and different

not as leggy as the blue.

Next season there were some pinks

scruffy and thwarted, then

they were gone. I couldn't keep them.

But, as my son said —

Bees can fly over the house.

Down the line

one petal, small as a baby's toenail

pink as

in a thrusting vernacular of blue.

My new book Now You Shall Know from  Five Islands Press is out

and we kicked our heels up at the launch at Collected Works in 

February. What surprised me is the young members of the editorial

team seemed to quite take to my gardening poems in the last section 

called - ... somehow urgent. And then I read this one at the Ron

Pretty Poetry Prize award night, and it went down quite well. In fact

I had discussions with several people about gardening in general

and forget-me-nots in particular. Of course I should have mentioned

in the poem the impudent way a forget-me-not will latch seeds onto

your socks in pursuit of its territorial imperatives.