Author Archives: Matthew Pullar
Ash (Lent 1)
Pancake Tuesday
Normally a Saturday ritual, it seemedwe should mark this day with pancakes too,a breakfast-table recollection of how feasting and fasting so often cohere. Even, I thought as I mixed egg and milk the night before, even mark the way that air fills the batter like pockets of life, as these very ordinary, meager elements ofContinue reading “Pancake Tuesday”
Evening
Morning
Birdsville, Werribee
This morning a bird I could not name spanned a sun I could not tame and on the road the dazzled day turned and turned its winding way. Through chicanes, past milkbars ran the path to work, the time to plan, but I was struck by birds in view on Kookaburra Avenue. And God I’mContinue reading “Birdsville, Werribee”
Ordinary Time
Meanwhile, pluck tomatoesripe from the garden.Watch the quinces shed their fur,turn late-summer-yellow,and burst with promise whilecockatoos eye them off.Check the peaches.See the opening flowers on the lemon tree.Cut the roses, deck the table.Water, plant and wait.Number days and count the joysand trust that tears shall cease.
When we’re no longer burning
All day the hazardous haze,yesterday too. I feared to takethe children outside; even the gardenwas clothed in the smoke of elsewhere on fire.Discomfiting, yetwe saw the world,a greenbluebrown orb of God’s graceheaving with the death of itand caught the surgethrough smoke-drunk eucalyptsof a day that will come yet bids us fightfor the day when we’reContinue reading “When we’re no longer burning”
2020/The Future
Dear past: We don’t have jetpacks.We still walk, don’t hover,there’s no button to press to pick your dreams,and still only some dreams come true,not all good. Old men still have grey beards, if they have beards.We can predict much and change little.Some things we prolong.Some days we are better, some days worse.We have not finishedContinue reading “2020/The Future”
Yet
…my road, My rugged way to heaven, please God. (Christina Rossetti, “Old and New Year Ditties”) Sometimes a harvest, sometimes fallow, sometimes Job’s cut-down tree, the year passes in a sighing nonetheless, a barely whispered “Yet”: yet this is not all, this is not how all years shall go, this is not the only movementContinue reading “Yet”
The Consolations of Writing 