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Poem from of Arc & Shadow 

Admirabilis - (collation of home)

                          The purpose of the poem, fills the room

                                                    ─ Wallace Stevens  

i

We enter small rooms, cherished from the past,

each one telling a tale of my parents’ life.

Now they are gone, we need to unravel

what is left  ─people in a marriage ─

the things they kept. We threw Dad in the lake because

he loved to fish. Mother's in a narrow corridor

of sorts, & cannot escape ─

the world going on without her.

We still see the light in her eyes

after the stroke.

Houses are history with clutter & song,

the old place creaking as we walk. You can almost

hear the tank overflowing, gutters pinging,

high-heels on concrete, neighbours sneaking round

the corner in a flap from the rain. Betty who loved Jesus.

Rene, an adorable hypochondriac, who got sicker

when the new doctor came.

ii

It’s delicate to pack fifty years of chattels: flowerpots,

fernery orchids, a shed full of tackle & tools.

If you touch something, you’re spirited back

to bikes on the lawn, cartwheels, winging the clothes line,

the family snake killer whacking the long grass

for the dog’s last chewed ball.

You’re a teenager, slipping into your mother’s room,

the dressing table's batwings coupling tiny bottles of scent,

glass top in a dust of fingerprints, old powder cracked

in her cut-glass like dried veins in a river bed.

Her silver brush & comb, an ensemble

she kept for forty years, clips & pins in a silver dish,

three drawers as wayward as your first perm.

iii

The kitchen, still in weathered wood, throws out

more wonder. The retro cup & saucers in ear-shaped

handles. There’s a Willow set, tea-pots in orange, yellow, green,

matching bowls & jugs. Gifts on their wedding anniversary,

trophies from a pennant’s match, the sideboard hiding more

than its sixties storage. Ramekins, a cutlery set, tea-towels never used,

tablecloths & boxed cotton sheets. Your mother could combust

the golf club with the winning ticket in her hand.

You walk the halls, the verandah, open each wardrobe.

Coats still hang behind the door. You press your nose into your mother’s

cream cashmere, scent of rose. This is a longing for touch,

to hold the smell of your father’s pressed shirts, singlets,

ties, mother’s scarves & gloves, those young lives you never knew.

If you could tell them now about this poem, read their song,

they still wouldn’t understand. They’d avert their eyes

from your arrangement of words, give a little wave

as if you were touched by the sun.

 

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