Poetry
Selected Poems
Perth
We came in the dark
The day lit by a storm
And I don’t know why
but we took it all on
Despite the oceans of water
Right outside our front door
We dried up inside
Cracked to the core
And after all this time
I find myself only wanting
To be dressed in the colour of my wine.
At the beach, Setting with the sun
Breasts
They have changed in form and function
No longer plump inviting a wanting play
Aroused by soft kisses and flickers of passion
Now tingling to hungry cries
My nipples growing with them
resembling villi these days
Small hands tapping one while gulping the other.
I prop them up and stare at the reflection
Letting them drop before I walk away
Happily folding them in my beige
Milk stained “boobie undies”
Making Art
I sat in the spring sun and painted with you.
I vacantly brushed the water colours in juvenile strokes
You squished the paintbrush into the paper
Green splodges
A masterpiece
It was the water that won in the end
In your mouth and on your clothes
Until you were stripped down and playing with the hose
And the sun dried this day in my heart and warmed the paving and crinkled our art.
Spiritual Pain
It’s a deep pain this spiritual one.
A whole world wrapped up in another.
Spinning you into the centre not knowing whether you’re burning or freezing.
A molten rock too scared to go anywhere incase you burn another.
Killing the fields you stumble upon.
Looking for a pool you can sink into.
Drowning the babble.
Ironic how you’re meant to find yourself in a pen with sheep but instead you’re in the wild with snakes.
Will the silent one meet me at the bottom?
Laying in the quiet.
The rage now feathers falling softly to soak up the tears.
And just before you take your last breath He will carry you to the surface and wait while you cough it up.
Opening your eyes slowly to wonder where you are.
And you realise you did not die.
By God’s strength, which has now also become your Song.
And you walk around like music for everyone.
Being Mum
It’s a chaotic happiness
This parenting business
My 3 alarms naturally ringing
At 5 am to pose the question if I actually slept at all
My bed and arms fill with tiny bodies
And loud voices beckoning me to “see mommy it’s morning time”
But is it 😝
I put on my uniform of peanut butter fingers and milk stained sweats. And sweep up my unwashed hair with flyaways and gray streaks.
“Mommy carry me”. “No carry me mama”.
Alright let’s see if I can carry all 3 of you!
“You can mommy you’re so strong”.
And I carry them all. In my arms, in my heart, in my mind and in every decision and concern and worry. In every memory made they are there.
“Mommy I don’t want to go to school, I just want to have a good day.”
Me too baby. Me too.
So let’s go to the beach and play. Only to sit huddled on a blue bench, watching the blue ocean under blue skies to realise…
I am their beach and their morning and their good day… and my burning eyes help me to see that’s ok.
Because one day I will be the one to jump on their bed at 5am and help them to see the good morning it is.