She Smells the Rain on Me She smells the rain on me again, behind the still warm stove. I have brought winter, though, in to her. My eyes full of the loose robe that all the dark way here, through the long climb, I have imagined - using the dark pine for cover. The fragrance of her soap I know and wanted all the evening down the slow back roads of trying to recall the time a year ago, when my feet crunched the gravel drive, by the broken swing, where a car that drove past, turned. Her first words then were of the rain upon my coat, and mine, the pine, the soapy smell of her loose robe, laid by the still warm stove for us. She smells the rain on me again. |
The Bee Farm after the painting by Clara Southern (c.1888), Warrandyte In a stillness without sharpness, she lends comfort to this raw afternoon. In from fast change of high-rise roads, she mends permanence. Coming back to the old song of the bees and her boxes, as I have to her. Nothing conflicts within the safe pastoral of grey and green. Her shawl is woven from the muted shadow of earth and trees. Night builds above her evensong and there is comfort in the moon: but no illusion. I know her grim privation the hours of back-breaking strain and slow. But like the dark sweet honey of her bees she stings along my blood with sacredness. |
|
|
|