Poetry

Country Gate

There were many gates that swung in and

out of our street where we lived. Some

were exceptional in iron grillwork. Others

shared the nose of a dog. A few hung over

their shadows, or lay bereft on their sides

forgetting the rituals of open or closed.

I used to swing on the front gate, eager

to see a space refusing to be still.

I could lay my body over the rounded

top rail as if watching the morning’s

wrinkled map of footprints in sand, black

ants erupting from tiny volcanic nests.

Our gate was chain-link steel, an intricate

pattern that Gran could have made with her rug

and crochet skills had she had stronger needles.

Now the gate is no longer there, pulled down

for four apartments. My parents are no longer there,

father going fourteen years before my mother.

This sounds very sad, but it isn’t. I believe

they are swinging somewhere in heaven.

Not on St. Peter’s gate, but in a body

of metal and cushions, similar to a porch

swing, a touch too heavy for a cloud perhaps.

But they’d be there alright sitting side by side,

enjoying the view, swinging, back and forth,

back and forth, as children do on country gates

looking at the world from a different angle.

Two Versions of Rain

i
Rain taps a tin-roof telegram of young hopes.
You slumber deep when it rains.
A kind of music surrounds, opens the sky
to let you soak in its rhythms.
You remember lying awake at night,
listening to a yard of leaves, summer baking
gutters on the roof, creature noises;
frogs in locomotion percussing you to sleep.
In autumn, windows opened to sliced sheets
of rain, trains tooting down the drainpipe track,
an invisible meander ready to take off, or the quiet
drip, drip, drip, of a quarter-turned faucet.
The night sprouted temple songs, Christmas beetles
ticking inventory, cicadas rustling up a prayer,
crickets never subtle, never whispering,
hiding in the roof like contraband.
Rain. Rain on the roof, shouting libretto
or teasing out a silence of its own.

ii
You're curiously wide awake when it rains,
in a trance of language, a verbal art.
The sky rumbles overhead, unleashes its mission
to swallow veranda, porch & fernery whole.
You grope in the dark for the alphabetic order
of bed-lamp, door latch, raincoat, umbrella;
yellow cord to unravel canvas awnings.
You're more versatile than an insomniac.
Feeling lucid, you're looking for that allusive word
- imagination!
Awake and soaked in night's vision,
gumboots squeak on concrete path;
a lexicon louder than the illuminated sky.

You go through all the motions, conscious
that the family are bodies under thick sheets.
The rain is heavier than the weight on your eyelids.
You've reached that point when you hallucinate,
bed covers strangling neck, legs and feet.
The situation can be decoded in one rapid eye
movement, in one disappearing act through drains,
that final trickle to a sizzled morning heat,
and last turn of the author's tap.

Poetry from "of Arc & Shadow" - Sunline Press 2013