Mater Misericordiae

How to let go?

how to breathe again?

how to unlock the tiny door

to the Tabernacle of my lungs?

 

How to let the tiny bird of my breath

out through the open door

of its wicker cage?

how to let the flapping birds of my breaths

explode from my belly

like Tarkovsky’s swallows

from Our Lady’s heavy skirts?

 

Oh, let it go, let it go!

The cage isn’t made from wicker but from pride;

the door isn’t locked with metal

but with anger.

 

Let them fly, let them fly!

The little birds butt against the walls

of conceit and hubris

woven together into an armour

that binds the spirit tighter

than a torturer’s iron corset.

 

Let them fly, let them fly!

Oh, let them fly!

Old Love

Sometimes it seems

that the world is full of old love-

men in handspun jumpers,

women in berets,

old people trudging the sand;

old men at the wheels of their cars;

tiny women slouched next to them

barely  able to see over their car bonnets;

cranky old men,

their dentures loose in their mouths,

sitting on the edge of their beds

where beautiful old ladies lounge

like odalisques,

their faces radiant with intimacies;

a gaggle of old people up the far end

of the beach,

while muscular dogs

lunge into the waves;

an untidiness of gulls

littering the air like

so many paper scraps

thrown to the wind.

 

 

 

Semi Precious

I lie flat on my back,

and you are there in the molding around the lampshade;

I roll onto my left side, and you roll there with me;

asleep awake asleep awake

the tinny seconds leap over each other

and fall in a heap.

 

I close my eyelids, and you are behind them;

I turn to the window you tried to unlock,

and there you are,

slotted in amongst the panes.

 

At 3am, the pillow is you.

I force it close, hating it.

 

Your eyes are strange and yellowish.

Your eyes are amber, with dead insects inside.

I cannot trust your jaundiced eyes.

My blue ones don’t speak their

yellow words.

 

Lapis and amber,

trying to speak a language

that may as well be made of stone.

My eyes are Prussian blue, yours are ancient tree sap.

Is it any surprise, then,

that we should peck and bow

at each other’s words

like click-clack fowls

ducking for grain?

 

Your body speaks a language foreign to mine;

my body speaks through touch;

yours speaks a language of mime.

Your mimicry makes me afraid.

It seems that you might commit any crime,

as long as there are no fingerprints

left behind.                                  

A Savage Orthodoxy

Mercedes Sosa and Misa Criolla;

the wind outside frigid, blustery.

Pan-pipes bring the Andes into my

high-ceilinged bedroom.

The front door rattles.

Good Friday is roaming outside

my house.

 

Once, when young, the poultry farm shriekings

on Good Friday morning

were the howling ghosts rising up from their graves.

 

At my First Communion breakfast,

I vomited saveloy and raspberry fizz-

why wasn’t it the body and blood

of little Baby Jesus?

The hymn they sang made me sick inside,

it was  so beautiful,

and life so transitory,

the light on our mothers’ faces

supernatural- a chrism.

Though, now I understand,

it was ordinary motherlove,

not the Transubstantiation.

 

Misa Criolla fills me with the same fearful beauty-

reminds me of the six-inch spikes on the grille

that we saw my sister’s best friend behind

when she became a Carmelite.

 

Beauty and cruelty,

compassion and ugliness,

mixed together to create una mescla,

a misa criolla!

A savage orthodoxy.

 

 

 

Pange Lingua Gloria, Gregorian Chant

Tumbleweed Lullaby

A chipped ceramic pot of dune,

faded blue and white,

sits like a scruffy buddha

at the foot of my disheveled bed.

Purple grass, untidy with seed;

tiny purple daisies,

their blooms corrugated,

making dry stipples;

sherds of water-softened glass

littering the soil.

 

On nights when there is no moon,

the threadbare canvas of my room…

Silent gulls carved from pine

could almost blink.

A crooked feather might ruffle.

Heat, and the thrum of misplaced frogs

in the sedges;

two dingy windows ajar

letting in an algae-blue light;

the open sky above the big blackwood

the colour of a breath,

sweet and awry and unhurried.

Sometimes, the night air was a lazy drug

when I needed it most-

the night air rocked me with a musky sleep,

cradled me on a sweeping arc,

levitated me on a current of lusciousness.

Bare arms above the covers,

I dozed, dazed by the snail-trail

silvered touch of the cool.

 

Kookaburras, there must be three!

They incant at the unripe greening of the sky,

their mantra filling the blackwood tree with ink.

The geese up the way rehearse

and trumpet their evening prayers,

where they all squat to face their feather-flurried ground.

 

Night falls, crashing into a thousand silent pieces.

Now, all sounds are ricochets

within the creaking walls of this house;

now, the whole world is held inside

the windows’ weird reflections.

Taylor Camp, Hippie Utopia, 1969

Mole Creek, Hobbit Cottage 6

We start to burrow down into the house,
like animals circling, circling,
to press down a sleeping place.
The shadows and the gentle light from the window
shuffle on my notebook as I write.
You can't see them, can you?
I wish you could!

I wish you could hear the morning fire
cracking in its black drum;
I wish you could feel the peace and lethargy in me.

The mirror in this pale place
turns its nose up at my bulk.
Why do I feel so ashamed,
when bulk and weight
are so highly valued in the walls,
the furniture...even the garden?

Once upon a time,
all the knots in the ceiling and walls
would have been faces.
I would have felt them watching me.

Mole Creek, Hobbit Cottage 5

Oh, I want to tramp these hills.
I want to feel light as a feather,
weightless as a cobweb.
I want to take a paper bag
and put all the dried and insubstantial things
in it.
I want to walk off the feeling
that my whole life is shoddy.
I want to walk off the judgement
of this heavy stuff,
this creamed-honey flagging,
this blackwood panelling.

I want to huff and puff away
the shame I suddenly feel
for my flatpack kitchen table,
and wobbling chairs.
I feel like a tribeswoman
with a Coke tab for a wedding ring.
Suddenly, I feel the shoddiness,
the weightlessness, of my life.
I have built my life on shifting sands.

Suddenly, I am ashamed for
my innocence.