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More poetry from Australia
The last Spring
1.
The last Spring scents Chekhov’s verandah where we yarn
But you were sad before
Another moon’s come and gone
unloved cartel of lines and bones
Drugs dissuade her as she hoovers the streets
in broken day’s enforced idleness
that music snipped like wings
and her mauve assistant
You sympathetically die
as the sky’s navy river rips
over the car-light stars
2.
Magpies sing late morning
through the neighbours’ concern
while, anaesthetised,
you watch fish-scales glint on the peace-talker’s lips
her talc’d hands sit aloft
and sleep like your cat
“Overseas markets” splits the drama series
Her hands, my hands
Her skin, my skin
She reels back
They’ve taken the life out of her
The sun comes up like serial murder
You take on the mantle of authority that dies
through the ghost trees’ column
3.
In the museum
past loves fade on the wall
squinting at your own reflection
Another statue felled in the rock-white garden
So death comes, with his scythe and his spade
his looped television
The mynah bird calls out
Don’t leave me
alone in this world
The edifice crumbles
Red sun logos Sudafed on the shy horizon…
Have a joint before chemo
at white-wheeled dawn
on a litter of cigarettes
and drive through the suburbs
as Syd King and his Five Strings play
4.
Lined palm trees cone the orange water
We meet at the spectacular
where fireworks cling to black sky
Pessimism hangs in your wallet like an address
your tin of foreign coins
and mobile picasso, loved sphinx
I held last year in my hand
Artesian belvedere of memory
Tomorrow, you get laminated
and fold your weary mother
I went to Antarctica to learn about myself
The grief counsellors were rushed to the scene
