Poems
To make bread
I sift flour into a warm basin
My fingers drip silken gloves
then scoop a hollow
for yeast
crumbled from its sloth
Imbibing nectar it buds
microscopic chaos
Bubbles celebrate renewal
Stern salt sprinkled at the edges
cannot spike
the jubilation
I knead the dough into compliance
fingers coaxing
knuckles punishing
until heat smooths the evidence
bakes a holey sacrifice
The four of us
seem strangely large
strung across the footpath
like warning signs in this doll's village
where midget memories sidle by
hugging the fence line
We've paused in picking over the old home
found yellowed satin shoes an old mincer
a poison pen letter Fourteen van loads
consigned to the tip to be picked over
by sea gulls
From interiors air brushed by our father
in pale rainbow colours
we've emerged into a June Landscape
of faded Arkley exteriors cowering
behind high cypress hedges
Three brothers and a sister
bound together by ghostly shackles
we amble to lunch at shops spawned
like garish toadstools from the rich
humus of their ancestors
Conversation skims lightly
over quicksands then back to salvage duty
Like Alice on drinking the magic potion
our elbows and knees keep blocking
the cupboards and corners