Selected poems
Sea pinks
'not growing as much when challenged
by severe exposure to wind'
— Irish Independent
Also called thrift
because expert at
doing without,
they will subsist,
manage with less
than your minutest
attention, no
luxuriant flourish,
will stick to
crevice or niche
if that's on offer —
rock splits with so much
close focus or
perseverance — such
spots of shy colour
in the cheek of this
grey day and portent
may draw the blank gaze
only a moment,
nameless — if electric,
mere undercurrent
we won't pick
or pick up on,
though gracing each chink
I put my foot in,
backing off the way
I came, their mute feminine
demeanour may
mislead you to think
wallflower, violet, but they
will not shrink.
Siege
I've grown used to this:
the tap, the rattle —
learned to dismiss
the insistence, and say
the raven, near mating,
mistaking his reflection
for some insufferable rival
who must be neutralised
at once, cracking his fragile
self-image, exact match,
prising up tiles like scales
or flakes of my skin as I feel
this house begin to fit me
impervious, I trust, hoping
he makes no headway,
almost successfully
fending off incursion
or even the suggestion
that I am in any way
at risk, indifferent, convinced
these rumblings mean nothing,
so that I wholly miss deliveries
intended, the postie, for instance
rapping insanely, trying repeatedly
and finally giving up on me.
Second siege
... feel the roots of the house move, but sit on ...
— Ted Hughes, 'Wind'
It begins by night
when you think to be private,
think nothing can call you out
but this brazen gale
lays waste to all
willed peace or rest;
you toss, lost vessel,
and roll, and reconsider
what you are doing here —
had you forgotten
these soul-winters, the way
they strike and blight every
good intention — yet
yours is a strong house, stone
and slate, and every creak
already accounted for
through many a bleak year
that still in turn saw summer
and should see more,
nothing that lies loose or
unmastered about this place
so why the blank ache, paralysis
at a merely exterior shriek
as if it might herald collapse
and all you can do is wait?
School walk in German winter
Our one star has departed
We're wholly dark
The clouds are shedding
Pretension to friendliness
Flake by flake
Which of us guides the other
Across this glassine surface
That blanks every letter
Deadening words
Who is that figure
Globe-headed, dirndl-skirted
Vacant hand-holder
The street-sign makes Mother
Her little familiar
When you were born
The ground had taken
More than a dusting
We were locked in
But not forever
Now you are thirteen
Age of reversible prime
And happy number
Of fact not rumour
Half-apprehended
Or superstition
Of getting up again
And walking onward
Of facing down
The downward forces
The Niederschlag
Tracy Ryan is a Western Australian writer whose latest book of poems is Hoard (Whitmore Press, 2015). Her most recent novel is Claustrophobia (Transit Lounge, 2014)..