Episode 1. (in which a wife becomes a widow)

“They’re Roman Catholics, of course,

All those kids, have to be.

Don’t have any choice really, do they?

My God, what a tribe!

Still, cheaper by the dozen I always say.”

And the tongues clacked even louder

when your husband went to work one day

and his heart sent him home in a coffin.

 

You, the new tribal elder,

with no time to rend your clothes or cut your skin

or wail into the night

survived,

your duty to the children

and your love for the One

(tested in late lonely hours of single terror)

ensuring tomorrow and then tomorrow,

until automatic again.

 

Episode 2. (in which a widow becomes a wife again)

The back door is banging less these days

and the youngest stragglers are drifting from the hearth

as a familiar face comes calling.

To your children you deny blushes

and your diminishing waistline

but, eventually,

you fall in love with his passionate patience

and his belief in you.

 

Episode 3 (in which asbestos taketh away what God has joined together)

A cough got its skates on

and pale Christmas courage

gave us memories of him to live with.

We all came to be with him and you.

You, stronger at your core than us all,

solace to kin and doctors alike,

determined that you were married to a man and not a patient,

laughed as you prayed and liberated Peace

from the clutches of pompous Death.

 

You, the tribal elder,

again no time to rend your clothes or cut your skin

or wail into the night,

survived for him and your duty to the offspring

and your love for the One.

But this time, the late lonely hours did not fill you with terror

but questions

about where you would find automatic tomorrows this time.

And you even dared “Why?”, in your private silence.

 

But in a hot, dusty churchyard

you walked bareheaded

and sang loud your hope of a merciful Heaven,

striding defiantly every inch of the way

as though everything had happened

but nothing would change.

Silent-Time,

returning insistently

on anniversaries of light

and dark.

 

Mirror-Time,

encouraging reflection,

but lacking depth

in the sum of its parts.

 

Shadow-Time,

for those with their backs to the Sun

or those looking over their shoulder

to see where they’ve been.

 

History-Time,

which speaks for itself

in the language of the actors,

especially the victors.

 

I could tell you of a time when She brought avocadoes to the sea

but you would only see its shadow in your mirror and be silent

in the presence of an uncommon history.

 

I wrote this many years ago when I was running strategic planning sessions for disability agencies.

Yesterday, before we planned the future,

I watched you scan the room

and discreetly re-arrange it

to make his entry as smooth as your own.

 

As the room talked,

you led the listening to him

and planted your thoughts on the borders

of his lifetime garden.

 

At some signal I did not see,

the two of you left and then returned in style,

either having been to the toilet

or to visit the Queen.

 

At lunch, you invited me to sit with you

and share his jokes

and learn that food can be thereabouts

and still sustain.

 

That night, I recited my mantra,

‘To plan is to cease to be a victim’,

but as I lay there sleepless in the dark

I heard myself whistling.

 

In the morning, I arrived before everyone else

so I could clear his pathway

and laughed as he rolled in, without you,

waving his homework like a flag of independence.

From my time in the Kimberley region in the north of Western Australia in the 90’s.

 

I wonder if this is like India;

they say ‘stay too long and you can never leave’.

 

Pindan dust in every crevice

staining my lifeblood indelibly.

 

Wet heat boiling the blood,

aircon the only cold comfort.

 

Tracks embedded in my spine

until the uncorrugated seems suspect.

 

Frustration with the timeless

as an excuse for no tomorrows.

 

The challenge of black history

Fading into right white history.

 

Today’s ‘answers’ perhaps tomorrow’s follies

for me, a ghetto dweller in this forever foreign land.

 

No, this is not like India;

I’ve been leaving since I arrived.

 

She descends the stairway, she has no goodbyes

It’s the only fair way, she’s heard all the lies

Heads for the door, it’s no fun anymore

As an unpaid whore for a lifetime.

 

Where are the answers, where do you start

To empty your head and protect your heart?

Nowhere to go, who wants to know

A woman alone for a lifetime.

 

She looks for the daylight that hides from the night

From valleys of duty to mountains of right

No longer fears the sighs and the tears

Of a faithful wife for a lifetime.

 

She takes as her playground the ends of the earth

The womb of her spirit about to give birth 

To her own mind, one of a kind

A woman she’ll know for a lifetime.

 

This poem was adapted by Ronnie Taheny for a track called Tell Your Story Walkin’ on her album ‘Valentines Prey’, released in 1996.

If it’s true that Canberra does exist

and is not simply a state of mind,

what are we to make of this monument

to mind over matter?

 

What can we say of the soul

of this planners’ fantasia

with sheep at the fringes?

 

Is it necessary and sufficient proof of its heavenly value

that angelic children play on Parliament’s roof

while the enchanted forests are shredded

in the national interest?

 

Is this God-as-machine all we can reasonably ask and,

if we have created it in our own image,

where did we find such a sideshow alley mirror?

 

The answers are not apparent

but a suggestion, if I may,

in the interests of perspective.

 

Take an occasional mythic journey

and observe the underlying sheep

grazing resolutely at the edge of reality

and hear the bleating of the new-born lambs

who are neither content to be silent

in the heart of this land nor

in the back of your mind.

Note: The word ‘goes’ for many years was the popular substitution for ‘says’, as immortalised by the TV comic character of Kylie Mole.

 

Stop me if you’ve heard this

but there’s this woman, see,

and she walks into this bloke’s life

(bold as brass)

and she marches up to him and goes

“I’ll have a life friendship, thanks”.

And this bloke goes,

“Sorry, only got ships that pass in the night friendships;

fresh out of life”.

So this woman goes,

“Well, I’ll wait ’til you get one in”.

And the bloke goes,

“Nar, don’t stock ’em any more;

they’re always breakin’ down

and they cost too much to repair”.

So the woman goes,

“Well, I’ll make one then.

I’ve got a bit of spare love

and a mattress on the floor

and a corkscrew

and a high boredom threshold”.

And the bloke goes,

“Alright, alright, but there’s a few conditions”.

So she goes, she goes,

she goes

away.

 

For a family grieving a stillbirth.

 

If you took out the pain

and held it up to the light,

would it look like

something that belonged to you?

 

Or would it look like someone else’s fate,

wrongly delivered

by an absent-minded God,

who’d forgotten that you’d taken out love insurance?

 

Or would it look like your karma,

reflecting from your life mirrors,

clear and unambiguous,

like everything else in your life?

 

Or would it look like what it is,

there and inescapable,

painful, inexplicable, ambiguous,

and tattooing a face on your heart

that will live forever?

 

Take out tomorrow

and hold it up to the light;

and make it look like something that belongs to you.

Background: In the 90’s I lived in an inner suburb of Adelaide, where burglaries were rife, and we suffered that intrusion twice.

Our under-things in disarray

they’ve spread our privates wide

and filled our rooms with the sour sobs

the urbanite must abide.

I look for rhyme in what they stole,

the price these objects fetch,

as if they’ll yield a perfect clue,

and fit a formless wretch.

What have we here, what circumstance

has brought them to our nest

to stuff a K-mart pillow slip

with mid-life’s treasure chest?

The underclass in sweet revenge,

retrenched and fighting back?

Or addicts in a frenzied grab

To feed their mother-smack.

All conscience-pricked, I will forgive

their need to take their share

and call for rapid social change

to clear the fettered air.

But deep inside my bowels rage

against the outer grace

and if I find the thieving shits

I’ll smash each mirror face.