SELECTED SONNETS
SHE SMELLS THE RAIN ON ME
She smells the rain on me again, behind
the still warm stove. I have brought winter, though,
in to her. My eyes full of the loose robe
that all the dark way here, through the long climb,
I have imagined - using the dark pine
for cover. The fragrance of her soap I know
and wanted all the evening down the slow
back roads of trying to recall the time
a year ago, when my feet crunched the gravel
drive, by the broken swing, where a car that drove
past, turned. Her first words then were of the rain
upon my coat, and mine, the pine, the soapy smell
of her loose robe, laid by the still warm stove
for us. She smells the rain on me again.
THE BEE FARM
after the painting by Clara Southern (c.1888), Warrandyte
In a stillness without sharpness, she lends
comfort to this raw afternoon. In from
fast change of high-rise roads, she mends
permanence. Coming back to the old song
of the bees and her boxes, as I have
to her. Nothing conflicts within the safe
pastoral of grey and green. Her shawl is
woven from the muted shadow of earth
and trees. Night builds above her evensong
and there is comfort in the moon: but no
illusion. I know her grim privation
the hours of back-breaking strain and slow.
But like the dark sweet honey of her bees
she stings along my blood with sacredness.