Breastfeeding

You wake crying

in the early afternoon,

In a sunlit room

I lie down to feed you.

Your eyes gaze into mine,

Light enters and exits you,

And we are twice joined.

Wimmera by Sidney Nolan

I said to my love who is living
Dear we shall never be that verb
Perched on the sole Arabian tree
Ern Malley

a figure
the lost dark
reels from the open country
of himself

I was in Dimboola once
the landscape was not gone
though you took it with you
pressed between the pages of a book

the artist eliminates all traces
of looking
takes only himself
and not the frightened dust

At One

Hello? You okay?
You gone go inna car?
You gone go?
You okay?
yuh/yuh/yuh/
More? G'day. Hi. Yay.
Hey. Heeey.
Mumma. Dadda.
You okay? Okay?
Gone go?
Bye bye boowa.

Dreaming Sisters

each night
they sisters lie
side by side
on narrow beds

squabble fret
squirm protest
finally one
then the other
submits

two girls
breathing out
ink black clouds
pin-prick stars

private constellations

they wake at light
relieved
and irritated
to see each other
again

The manifestation of unnamed longing

Baby in the high chair

More? More? More?

We give him more

It ends up on the floor.

41ºC

As if he can’t believe the heat either

a crow, glossy as an oil slick

staggers under the supermarket awning

with his beak hanging open.

I shop for things we might require:

Arnotts Assorted Creams, 40 fish fingers,

5 litres of milk, yoghurt by the bucket.

In the carpark my husband runs the air-conditioning

the baby lolls sideways in his seat

and the girls play animal vegetable or mineral.

Una is a letterbox

Fred is a potato cake

Una is a pancake in the shape of a dead guy.

At the cash register I run back for dishwashing liquid.

A woman says sternly into the telephone

hooked up to the loudspeaker:

there is a Nissan Patrol with a dog inside

and no windows open if you are in the store

please attend to your animal.

I walk out into the sweltering carpark of the late afternoon.

This human world is melting into the hills.

We drive into the glare.

I join the game. They ask me: Are you an animal?

No. Are you a vegetable? Yes.

What sort of vegetable? they shriek

Mum? What sort of a vegetable are you?

Una asks are you crumby?

Laughing I look back at their laughing faces.

We drive past cows in their fields.

I am an apple pie.

The long day grows hotter.

Something is terribly wrong.

The Two Brothers

such wounded funny men such boys

such self-effacing broadfaced fathers

of dark-eyed sons such husbands such friends

with hands that dote that circled their aunts

that brush past at the sink with incidental touch

that hold each other aloft such men

such wounded funny Catholic boys

such tea-drinking on and off the wagon men

such country boys such eager grazers

of the night sky with one collective eye

such moon walkers hand talkers heart warmers

such tall talers such dream sailors

such brothers such boys such men

---

Month of poetry is on again and I am participating. I treasure the poems I wrote last year, capturing daily life with a six to ten week old baby as well as the older girls. The above was inspired by our company for New Year's Eve. We spend a lovely night in a rambling house in Drysdale in the company of very dear friends and some of their extended family. These brothers are two of five boys, and two of the genuinely kindest and most interesting people I have ever met - I am fascinated by their whole family. The kids had a ball, romping around in the gardens in a massive tribe with two dogs, even Avery had the company of four other babies. It was a wonderful night and a magical start to the New Year. The men got the big telescope out and we all lined up to look at the craters on the yellow edge of the moon and dream ourselves up into the timeless sky.