Another Funeral:

(For cousin Terry)

There are no lessons in this,

He was Terry known as George to his family,

He was my cousin, the only son

Of my father’s only brother;

I do not know his children, he and my days

were years ago before women and girls and alcohol.

Bright days when Terry filled me with his ideas,

His facts and his thrill of adventure;

Yabbying in the old lake at Moonee Ponds,

Turning lights off up and down Airport West streets,

Sinking in a raft he built and I floated in -

Terry was older and wiser than me

In those faraway times of our childhood.

And now he has gone

And the many times I thought to catch up with him

Are in ruins but his memory runs strong

Through all that I do, especially in the words

I write and the stories I love to construct.

He was Terry known as George,

He was my cousin and in the years of my childhood

When the sun shone bright and the rain always left us,

He was my friend.

Nanna's Grandfather Clock:

It lived in the shadows of her bedroom, hers and Pop’s,

Though in my memory Pop is gone

Except in that room he wasn’t – a memory I guess

Like the distant ringing of that bell

He clanged every Christmas at Bid’s

Walking the street as Santa Clause for the kids,

The many of us who sat, brothers, sisters and cousins alike –

Although this memory is not mine – like that clock –

The clock that sat in her bedroom, the clock, tall and proud,

Silent mostly, a soldier, a testimony to secrets I did not know

While sometimes it gonged, an eerie sound

But Nanna liked eerie – like the picture she kept

Of Jesus that glowed in the dark, especially his red, red heart

That she saved for us at Christmas, when she turned it on

When we were allowed inside

Though usually my sister and I were not,

Cousin Terry was, and Steven too, just not us

And to this day I know not why that was -

The memory sits there, like that clock, in shadow and myth

Filled with the terrible shaking of legend and mischief.

Queenscliff and Kev’s ashes:

It was weird from the beginning,

being there and yet Kev not around;

his voice, his smile, his need to be on the move -

like the ocean was Kev, rolling, moving,

carrying information into our ears –

so it was fitting for us after all

to be there at the Queenscliff pier,

Kev’s brother opening the container,

spilling his ashes into the water,

two paper airplanes to escort him

and then the wreath Lee had fashioned,

purple and green - a leap from land to sea,

from birth to death, how quick we fall

in this pull of mortality, this gravity of  life…

We stood in seaweed clumps, watched

the planes float beside, the first purple flower

separate and another act as a waving hand

as the waves lapped as if clapping

and above cormorants circled, new escorts

to carry Kev when the sodden planes

could no longer follow and as the water,

like the liquid breath of a sea-god, carried

the wreath away and the wind blew

into the heart of us all, so my thoughts

like the many waves, were white tipped,

as I left the watch and headed to shore

with Kevin’s memories for company.

The many textures of absence

absence is a toothache

the tongue, a snake searching for prey

absence is a severed limb

echoing the intent of things it once did

absence is a flower

all petals fallen, the bud burnt, bowed and defeated

In these days of absence

I have become a tired river, I meander,

curl back on words and thoughts,

remember old cliffs and rocks,

the cover of cool places lost

as the sun discovers a way to expose me again

I have begun to sleep

while standing, while talking

while laughing at the day to day excuses

of how we pass the time while watching the slow fade

of memories that become absent

because they can no longer accumulate

like the time my father died and I realized

I would never hear his voice

never again see him smile

nor know the touch of his hand

or the gentle rise of his right eyebrow

like the earth stranded beneath the sun

baked, fried, defeated

and the clouds remain absent

and the only shade

is in the heart of the deep cracks that split me apart

even as I wait

A week already-almost:

Tomorrow it is

next weekend already

and last weekend

now has all these days in-between;

each day turned opaque, hidden -

Grief has a craftsman’s fingers;

has time to kill, time to turn grit

into the darkest pearl

and a tree into searing coal.

Grief rests in all my spaces,

like that moment

between the inhale and the exhale

or that spot between seeing

one thing and then the next - scenes 

you would have painted, now will never exist.

Grief tells me time has passed

while, being the Trickster, tricks me

into thinking last weekend has yet to pass.

Last weekend Kev, we said goodbye,

overhead the sun shone, beside me, my wife

cried...Jo wept too as he played his guitar,

each pluck a rending of my heart’s soured strings,

and you, hidden in that plain pine box,

could only have been resting – surely…

It was only last weekend when I 

carried you to the car—

the rope not rough enough to take away

the weight of cost—

and let loose a paper airplane

to transport your spirit

into the sunshine and light.

It was only last weekend

and yet

it seems not a moment has passed

and

that the years lie ahead

without you.

Humanity's Footprints

In whispers, it is said, mouths

hidden behind walled hands,

that God’s words are found in the sound

of water; water pooling, trickling,

flowing in rivers, crackling across rocks.

It is thought as well, though no one admits,

cracked lips sealed tight lest the words excite,

that the devil is found in the sound

of sand; sand blown, brushing,

driven across the land, filling the towns.

It is never mentioned, though well understood,

that when the water and sand merge - there

in the mud is the sound of humanity; humanity

sucking, gripping, pulling, leaving wordless shapes

in spaces of things forever departed.

Soldier buried beneath the red sea:

When the red sea crashed

my children of the future

became lost in the non-being of never-will-be.

Washed clean

by water held back and then released

yet I,

a soldier forced to follow or starve;

driven down the bank to follow the Israelite -

am I less than the slave,

should a god decide my fate

by changing theirs?

Or is that the essence of faith -

that fate decided

will not erase your fate

in the slate cleaned by the concealed

hand of a god playing dice in a hall

with other gods great or small -

the bones of future children (as well as the present circumstance)

the chips passed around

in this game of devil-may-care betting

between beings unseen?

Or is it that the gods are no more

than echoes of the genetic twining

wishing to forestall its own demise

by creating future strands and in this copying,

as our blood courses through artery and vein,

we hear the voice of  the true God?

Do we pretend afterlife knowing the death

we must embrace

means some of us lose the race

towards procreation and to appease as all,

lest it be us in particular that fall,

we enchant ourselves with the possibility

of reaching that lofty and eternal hall after the moment

when the red sea stops flowing and the pump falls still?