careful triangles of bread
ham and cheese, maybe pickle if you're lucky mayo and egg a beer before the yardarm's hit the twelve o'clock mark 'Well, it was an early start' sausage and sauce for the kids plenty of small talk 'How's work been lately, you busy mate?' Dougie telling tale of Vietnam how he caught some flak couldn't be further away from Khe Sanh and thank-God-for-that cordial, a cup of tea bikkies meticulously arranged tied to the fencepost dogs straining on leashes salivating occasional tidbits faux grass and a smatter of children heads bobbing a field full of poppies and a cockatoo white in the sky as a dove every year adds a couple more kids abseiling the cannon every year, a couple less diggers And we couldn't be further from Tobruk or Flanders and thank-bloody-God-for-that Kathryn Ross April 25th, 2016 Copyright Kathryn Ross 2016 my mother is quietly ill
and I can't bring myself to despise the fly that has tormented us for days I'm sure he is unwitting the cells in her body know even less they are killing Kathryn Ross April 18th, 2016 Copyright Kathryn Ross 2016 Three hundred and eighty-one days
the buses stood idle and I wonder of James Did he sit around playing card games while the wheels of his bus and the status quo rusted and the rubber slowly perished A bus seems such an unlikely place to take a stand She wasn't as old as you think and no more weary than usual but she was tired of the way things stood as she pulled a quilt of quiet resistance up around her chin And her husband forbidden to speak of the case forced to throw his job in and the phone kept on ringin' and the voices were slimy with death Three hundred and eighty-one days they car-pooled or walked sunshine or rain and the woman considered least likely to make the wheels tremble remained in her seat, didn't shout and everyone listened cause every so often quietly speaks the loudest Kathryn Ross April 16th, 2016 (title 'so much depends' taken from the first line of 'The Red Wheelbarrow' by William Carlos Williams) Copyright Kathryn Ross 2016 There is a rumour here
that whispers of itself beyond these flattened cardboard boxes who'd forgotten they have volume who let the stamp become the image saw the rippled sea floor but not the tides that moved it's passage So crane your memory to kinder days of primary coloured folded poster paint butterflies poised to launch from the page in rows and rows of inkblot tests that nobody cared to decipher strung and drying like Tibetan prayer flags quietly reminding ~ you need two wings to fly Kathryn Ross 15th April, 2016 Copyright Kathryn Ross 2016 I am an image
carved in air as windmill blades will slice the rhythms of the breeze and there are turbines in my lungs that fashion every breath into language when we were small we wondered at the colour of the wind and if we could shape our words to the thickness of atmospheres around us what if my words are shaped to fit perfectly the angle of your ear the fine cochlear hairs bending to the shuffle of my breath they say everything is shaped in waves what if my voice is the ocean and closing in again the air around me like water mends the wake and still the ache a gentle ringing in my ear like muscle memory Kathryn Ross 12th April 2016 Copyright Kathryn Ross 2016 He left his signature
on your skin in a perfect calligraphy of healing knotted in rows of ants sutured with reassuring words and the enormity of a five year tick How you had me graffiti his name on your breast with the words 'he woz ere' emblazoned in ink Oh but you should have seen the look on his face And the rest of us puddled about with snow-filled mittens and helpless hands restocking the fridge in perpetual clink and shuffle of casserole dishes You know he really admired your penmanship Kathryn Ross April 8th, 2016 Copyright Kathryn Ross 2016 gather up the offcuts
old fence palings down the side shed beg Dad for a couple a nails or pinch 'em from that new house going up, shiny and strewn like they weren't even something precious rusty hammer Yes, we'll be very careful A door of flannelette sheeted and pinned to the wall the rules of etiquette a broken watch so we'll always know the time anyway, who cares Mum'll yell out coo-ee if Your dinner's on the table going stone bloody cold. Where have you been? decorator dandelion drooping in a jar splash of yellow ragbag quilt, a cardboard box to rest our elbows on sweepings of pine needles softness for a bed and quickly kissing Tommy Sinclaire scent of grass-stained jeans and something dry like hay or sunshine a book to read or Mum's old magazines crosswords near complete serrated pages where the recipes have been mostly it was tribal seclusion and exclusion Build your own whydontcha! No boys allowed! except for Tommy Sinclaire, yeah he's alright, we'll let him in Kathryn Ross April 11th, 2016 Copyright kathryn Ross 2016 Regarding stillness
I looked in all the usual places placid lakes layered in ripple riverbed chatter water and stone and the hover and static buzz of insects shuffle of silt and sand at the shoreline the constant inundate of my breath Everything's kinetic and there's the bind For in the journeying resides arrival and in the seeking of it ~ finding Kathryn Ross 9th april 2016 Copyright Kathryn Ross 2016 |
Author
Kathryn Ross Rossi@serenebeliever |