Poetry | Stories | Photography
Those days of darkness and
fingering the telephone circles.
It never occurred to us that we
would need a portable phone.
What a clash of generations,
we X’s remembering old times.
Someone said we are the bridge,
remembering the absence of AI.
We remember, so we must all die.
I move along the memory lines –
A rosy filter fills me with nostalgia.
Those days before technology –
watching movies with the parents,
and listening to cassette tapes.
I move above the memory lines –
all the filters fall away to reveal
Brown.
Stillness between the trees
snowflakes fall
Something reminds her of love
sweet memories
Standing in the fresh air of youth
sorrow floods in
Standing in the stillness without you
soft flakes fall
the quiet path
waiting inside for forever
the car arrives
fabric moves around her
the old church
whispers on the breeze
their eyes link
intense waves of loving
they commit
serious words of promise
together now
scents of the garden
become memories
a hot wind blows
through my clothes to burn my skin
as I think of you
resting in a place so far from the sea
so that you could
be close to the son you loved so much
reduced to ash
I think of you resting without adventure
and I wonder
if I should have given you to the sea
A cup of tea, for one; I sit alone with my archived thoughts.
A welcomed cup of tea, yet the thoughts are wicked and sorrowful.
Can’t we brush them away? If we did, then I wouldn’t be thinking about you.
I used to long for days alone. Now they are my everyday.
Lightening strikes the old tree;
alone in what once was a forest.
Our lives changed forever that day;
a displaced people, a genocide.
When the wolf arrived, we listened;
we respect the power of the bears.
The settlers didn’t believe our stories;
finery and position were what mattered.
The blood-soaked soil grows corn;
burning fertile fields from a dying planet.
The house greets us with fragrant smells
of citrus tarts, homemade lemonade,
and images of a long, familiar kitchen we love.
Stepping into the home from our childhood
we each process the way we feel
about the good and the bad memories made.
A nostalgia for idealised memories saturates
the memories we wish to deny
as Mum brings the teapot to the old cedar table.
A fleeting glimpse,
the music of Angelo Badalamenti
playing down low.
I am in that place,
watching people with telephones,
ethereal women.
The horror of small:
exacerbated by her beautiful face,
falling in love again.
There was an ordinary day,
on that day, I met a beautiful willow tree
with eyes of many colours.
With her hand in another’s,
I looked upon that willow tree with doleful love
that could never come to be
A golden-haired willow tree,
haunting my memories with her beauty and grace;
a ghost of a love unfulfilled.
C & K 