Blessing
Sunlight broken over pebbles
a wash of reflected light between cool walls:
stone built as a shaped welcome
where day or night can wander in.
When you have packed and walked
with my mother-blessing
and the rip of apron strings
when you walk with your lover
a loved child at each concrete-gritted hand
I turn back within these walls
and link fingers with an old silence.
Lunch
Elegant young man
lunching munch on chips
from paper at the bus stop
no doubt it's in your lease
on Adam's higher ground
to smile snake-eyed
down your nose
quirk your greasy lip
to set aside
some fat old bag
indulging in an apple.
Lacunae
There are edges:
day's end, the tram road broken
by a street laid across
all mapped
by the appointment grid ruled off
or the local area directory.
These taunt him with
spaces between their hard
damaged certainties.
He scratches whether really
he remembers. Walked up a street
over some day's end, over tram tracks
crossed into running downslope
almost his swung arms and breath recall:
wasn't there someone something
Chorale
A heavenly choir
some individual faces at the front
and all the rest in the careful fuzz of distance
computer-generated to a full infinity
is not the blest world that ripens its harvest of God:
each fern frond fractally patterned
on the DNA of all, thereby most
its simple intricate self, each and all
in everything the same difference: self,
the tentative crooklet, green out of the tan stalk
enquiring outwards, 'So is this
me?' Charged with the boundless burden of God's
scatterbrained focused invention, each
is yes myself. No replications.
An infinity of front row faces.
Aileen Kelly is an Australian poet whose work has won major awards. Latest book: The Passion Paintings (John Leonard Press).