Poem | Robert Wood

 

photo credit: ebay.com 

                                 

In the space between

the steel cut oats

they saw the foundation stone.

It was where the townspeople prevailed

on the strength of their ideas

and the delicate nurturing that came with freedom, peanuts and bowerbird eggs.

We hoped.

Between heaven and earth

we found windows

in a house made empty

of talk

by a wind of wildness. Willow.

We sat down to eat

the wrasse brought up from their watery depths

and the ones we welcomed

they told us

of the many thousand miles they’d walked to be here now.

In the husked meringue

we saw

the bounty of heaven

clouds with thousand rain

quenching and crisp

aromatic as gin

a pillow to rest from weariness

and nourish each other without blame.

The orchids were at their feet

spidery and white

and we saw

breath of our breath turn to smoke in the winter morning

like dust, like light

necks craned.

They made soup from

bark and stones, laboured with sashes and honour

spoke of the ice hotel

with the furs and hares.

We sat as sovereigns do

held in our hands a globe

the size of a bull’s head,

the smell of rain on our hair.

On the forty acres

the mule carts burnt

flames green from copper

laundry a burnt reminder

of cleanliness next to thistle

next to bullets and pyramids

a netful of leopards and a raft to the underworld.

That afternoon, we saw a wave made of all the others.