Marian Webb

26 May 2015

The years erased

In years
no longer here,
being nothing but
memory, you
lounged in this room
and we chatted
about food we'd eat
and animals we loved
and people who
rubbed us the wrong way.
Lives elapsed.
Now in this
room, you are
invisible, impalpable.
The years erased
your foot-step
on the stair.

03 February 2015

Light echoes

I am the echo of light.
A fish glimpsed—gold
above unseen gills.

On silent glass
my quick eye gleams—
in the deep room

I watch—miming
skin breathing
on white bone.

I am double—sum
of seer and seen.

Empty—I
colour dark sense.

The silvered face
draws the drowned
beam.

31 January 2015

Freedom is

like getting out of school.
    I run along the footpath
    over the bridge across the creek.

When I was six

    my sandals were jelly-bean blue.
    I ran under the culvert
    where the water splashed.

Late home I ran

    in the middle of the night.
    The immeasurable
    hour-glass from outer space
    had landed in the yard.


Now

    dust-covered helicopters
    hover above the banks
    like rooks on a chessboard,
like faceless eyes.

I run

    along the footpath
    across the bridge
    over the creek.


My wings' sweep
    wields the wind.

24 December 2014

The wattle bird

sits on the slender tree
elegant in silhouette
against cloud cover

like a Christmas ornament
clipped to a twig, a sleek ellipse
with a tassel for a tail.

Like the glass of my memory
set with bright bead
eyes among the pine

a living, brindled pair
perches on the railings
round my house

clucking perennial
colloquies in the
green.