Morning finds her curled like a prawn Around a stuffed blue Pegasus, or the smallest Prawn-pink lion. Or else she’s barging Into my room, and leaning in close so It’s her hair I wake to — that coarse, dark Heaven of knots and purple fluff. … She wants a movie, or maybe Just the tussle […]
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Do you remember how great summer holidays were as a kid? A seemingly endless expanse of time when the daily routine of school-homework-weekends was suspended in a glut of play. I don’t remember the specifics of summer holidays but I do remember the rhythms. Cricket, of course […]
I’m still asleep but you know I will wake if you need – from ‘Wangal Morning’, Evelyn Araluen It’s been a wet spring here in Narrm/Melbourne. The sound of the rain on our deck woke me up from a deep sleep sometime in the early hours of the morning. I’d been dreaming of oceans and […]
I bend to it willingly, this patch of earth and its green things, in their own world (though I hold the title to it) hungry for life…” – from ‘After’ by David Malouf We planted daffodil bulbs yesterday, the kids and I. Fingers in dirt, carefully. Now we water, and wait for them to bloom, […]
“There is not city But the city within. No door, but the door To simple wisdom. We walk, dumb As newborns. Into the tremendous and endless Blessing.” – from ‘The Hinge’ by Cynthia Cruz Last night was sweltering, the heat of the day barely letting up. And despite their exhaustion, the kids weren’t interested in […]
Something woke me, something feathered up against me in a dream. Perhaps its soft tip of wing skipped across my face…” – from ‘Butterfly Kisses’, Ian McBryde We have a Saturday morning family ritual. We wake up early, the kids tumbling into our bed for cuddles and giggles, burrowing deep under the blankets to ward […]
“…balance of humors, coconut liquor thinned / by broth, sour pulp of tamarind / cut through by salt, set off by fragrant / galangal, ginger, basil, cilantro, mint, / the warp and woof of texture…” – from ‘Hot’ by Craig Arnold Lately, both kids have been climbing into our bed at various points through the […]
The beetroot is in my roots, borscht in my bloodline. My great grandmother was Ukrainian. The story goes that during a pogrom in the early 1900s she stabbed a Russian solder who was attempting to rape her, then escaped with nothing but a pair of brass candlesticks. I can’t vouch for the truth of this […]
Spoon of everyone. Spoon of the belly. Spoon of the empty belly. Spoon of the full one. Spoon of no one hungry. Spoon for everyone. — from ‘Spoon Ode’ by Sharon Olds I’m writing this sitting at our wooden kitchen table, early on a Friday afternoon. The big window above the bench is overlooking a grey […]
“But then the dark skin of night would peel off and there would be a fresh day waiting for us, glossy and colourful as a child’s transfer and tinged with the same sense of unreality.” – from My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell Pre-dawn on Monday morning T and I boarded our train home. I had no […]
