| I set the record straight
‘You can kill out of hate
or out of love.’
I gird my fingers
about my knobby knees
and hold her gaze –
this woman
with her bleached straw hair
and face bland as an egg.
Her trained eyes
give nothing away
her desk too is free of clutter.
Only her children, three
locked in their silver frame,
indicate a woman of passion
at least one presumes….
Her lips tighten –
‘Hate or love, Lewis
at the end of the day
someone is dead.’
So dead-pan is she.
I play her game
make my face serene as granite
slicked by waves
and think of Rosaleen.
‘She was dying anyway,’
and
‘Motive is everything,’ I say.
She shrugs.
Behind her on the wall
hang a red nose
a grinning mouth
and sad, drooping eyes.
I prop my elbows on her desk.
‘Can you hear him screaming?’
‘Who?’
‘Your clown.’
Her jaw drops.
Ha!
Got you, Ms Goodchap,
my know-all psychotherapist!
‘You see, in my experience –
when you really need to scream
– nothing comes out,
you’ve swallowed sound
or had it snatched from you.’
Grins the red maniacal mouth.
‘My father painted.’
Her nostrils twitch
she sniffs a clue
‘Interesting, tell me more.’
Well, screw you!
Her clown might encourage
some to blabber,
but I’ve no desire to skin my soul
with as little thought
as brother Jack would skin
his rabbits
exposing them pink
and blue-veined
as a baby in the womb.
Through her window
I see the estuary’s winding waters.
‘It’s cold in Dunedin.
Rosaleen once said
I have icicles for bones…
She dreamed
of this Sunshine Coast –
the sea licking
the sun searing her soul clean.’
‘Write, Lewis
write what you fear.’
‘The axe, the executioner’s axe!’
She jolts.
I raise my hands
‘Just joking –
the chair, is so much more –
humane, wouldn’t you say?’
‘You wouldn’t even get life, Lewis.’
She proffers a bleached smile.
But
I’ve seen you on your motorbike,
Ms unflappable Goodchap
minus your helmet
your hair streaming back –
there’s more to you too
than meets the eye.
So, for now I can allow
your probing
of a matter –
so intimate
so tender
so drenched with tears –
I don’t know how
to greet it each morning
with grace or grief.
Nor how to bear it.
|
At the Estuary
To clear my head
I go to the estuary
and stare at the water.
The tide is on the turn
testing moon tug.
I know motive is not everything.
The hand on the switch
must be kind.
Leaves shaped
like canoes
and
pieces of stick
like dashes
between thoughts
float on the surface
cast oblique shadows
on the sand beneath.
We all have two shadows
one outside
one inside.
Except Rosaleen
‘I can’t see
even a shadow
of a shadow in you,’ I said.
‘You
my jump-start
my safety net
my heart’s true lodestone.’
‘Lodestone?’
her knife poised
mid-sweep over her hot-buttered toast.
‘A lodestone is magnetite,’
I passed the vegemite.
‘A magnetized piece of magnetite
used by sailors to guide their way.’
She grinned. ‘Follow me –
and you won’t get lost?
and to think my ex always said
– I’m lousy with maps!’
‘With you
I won’t get lost.’
And I heard –
droned
by a pack of school boys
with grubby knees and no idea
what they were singing,
(I was one of them)
The old hopeful reassurance
‘Lead kindly light
amid the encircling gloom
lead thou me on.’
And saw –
out the corner of my eye
a shadow, skim
the white flank of the fridge.
And heard –
a snicker
that would become
all too familiar.
The light is dim
I’m droning now –
and watching the light on the sand
when the waves drag back –
turn silver to indigo.
‘The light is dim
and I am far from home.’
She was my home
She opened the door
and invited me in –
never mind my credentials.
Lewis Carlisle
geology professor
sequestered in rock
chipping away with hammer
and chisel as if his life
depended on it
which
it did.
Lifting me
on steady wings,
she raced through my veins
like a litre of whiskey
or, more poetically
like a spring tide –
my fingers snared
in her hair
my lips rendered soft
with surprise.
Hey, cut it out!
Rosaleen would say
‘This lyrical swooning
is not the Lewis I know!
Where’s your grating, glinting
language of rocks?’
Verse novel
Publication pending
© Rose Allan
|
