Category Archives: Poetry

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”

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”