Airborne

(first published in Island Magazine no.169 2023)

small talk makes a U-turn
between checking seatbelts
window shades and tray tables
as our flight attendant confesses
to once jumping out of a plane
over the Whitsundays weeping
all the way down then
pitches a laugh as if surprised
the memory could be his.
We can only imagine. So we do.

After countless simulations
daydreamed through twenty-four
time zones encased in titanium
and plexiglass
finally
the leap of faith followed by
the fall.

Limbs splayed against all common sense
as the blood pump works overtime
testing evolutionary limits.
Exaltation sets the bar
at a hundred miles an hour and more
before the canopy blooms
to slow the drop to soften the blow
of landing.

Those few airborne moments (roughly
the same amount of time it takes
for a starfish to suffocate) imprinting him
with otherness so that he never feels
(if ever he did) completely at home again.
So that it is all he can do to hold himself down
as he retraces his steps along the aisle
as he recites safety protocols
points out the emergency exit rows
fanning perfectly manicured hands.
Swallows hard before arming the door.

Cohabitation

(from undercurrents)

I research the level of humidity
required for the Never Never plant
to breathe indoors
observe the rain slicked moves
suburban roofs make
angling riverward
walk paths cracked with winter-
greening, gardens overlapping fanciful
blueprints and all of it, all of us
root bound under layers of spheres:

tropo, strato, medo, thermo, exo …

I practise unpeopling my poems
in an effort to become more birdlike
riding currents of purified air
diving through mirrors
shaking the sun-
lit-fish into bite-sized pieces.
In this state time itself
is no longer the enemy
but a generous benefactor;
consider the wonders
contained in each second –
230 beats of the honey bee’s wings
300,000 kilometres of light.

Accounting

(from undercurrents)

Over chicken wonton soup, talk of retirement
after toeing someone else’s line or even
a job loved, self-made, superbly done

then someone says

being an artist must be like
living your never-ending passion like
living your best life.

I can’t speak for the others:
the painters and dockers and sculptors
the singers and social workers and dancers
the potato farming playwrights …

or how any of us will account for days
that simply run into each other
clocking on and off, indifferent
to neurons misfiring efforts
to resist the good old tropes, the softer sell
when every idea seems booby trapped
each manifestation chipped or cracked.

But yes
there are other, finer times; on the brink
for instance, of taking up another trade
when someone else admits to reading poetry
out loud to their gastroenterologist whose approval
restores faith in the science of daydreaming
lighting up the brain’s executive net.

We are worthy those days for sure,
maybe even as close to our true selves
as we’re likely to get
though we can’t say quite how we got there
or if we will ever return. Just that we are
simultaneously adrift and firing on all pistons –
part mermaiden, part super buoy, watching
awestruck, the eelgrass grow, preserving shipwrecks
spring-cleaning and breathing
through our deepest blues.

All Souls’ Day

(from Between Breaths)

Offerings, kitsch as
the Sacred Heart’s 7 watts.

Mouths, soul-shaped,
singing each other into being,
dancing the dirt back into stardust.

It cannot be overdone
this welcoming home.

So …

a truckload of snuff for my granny,
a black pudding pinwheel
and a jug of Lourdes water to wash it down.

For Nana light beer on tap,
a transistor radio, racing form guides
and a bottomless box
of diabetic dark chocolate covered ginger.

For my hippy brother
who put his own dogs down
when it came to it,
but could not rest easy
in a room with a spider,
who said he wouldn’t live
past forty and didn’t:
cheese blocks and pickle jars,
a trail of hemp seeds
to find his way.

For my polio-stunted aunt
who missed her calling
expertly drawing on her eyebrows
so that she had the permanent look
of an eternal optimist:
travel brochures
and a library of unabridged
choose your own
adventure, romance novels.

For the littlest one of us
a single lungful of air,
just enough to be born with,
to know the sweet and sour
of what it is to live
against the skin of the world.

When women share
their stories with
other women

(from Points of Recognition)

Dust falls from crystal balls
everywhere. Empty fields
signed beware of the bull
call out memory’s bluff
as one by one old selves
old beliefs are drawn forth
shrugged off not without
compassion. A window box
over the Atlantic encourages
bees and daydreams. White hair
sings in streaks of peated whisky.
When women share their stories
with other women greyscale lifts
from the world’s face revealing
borders crossed and re-crossed
a chroma of microgravity
spherical candle flames
the gaze returned in kind
in renewed and fearless
recognition.