Eugene Alexander Donnini: ‘Ash Wednesday’ and ‘Recidivist’

Ash Wednesday

The Otways resonated with high winds
and the sun baked the bracken crisp,
anticipating the legacy of a flicked cigarette,
or redhead struck with the flare
of an arsonist’s intent.

On the road to Birregurra,
up at the old mill in the Marsh,
from a spark and a whiff in the grass,
sown into the sweep of an infernal wall,
that with such speed and temper
moved towards the conflagration
of the hills …

Where somewhere on a road
a family flees with all it can shove
in a boot, as on both sides
glass insulators melted down poles
like giant tears, and mountain ash
erupted upward like Roman candles.

Burning into the sky at night
from Skenes Creek to Fairhaven,
like a false vermilion dawn, that through
the shimmer and swelter of the day,
gathered its gloom into a massive cloud,
blanketing the sun as it moved
towards the CBD, so thick with dust
that every traffic light was stopped
on amber.

And from the air, puffed
and smoking bladders,
once cattle, sheep and roos,
and houses, like piles of cigarette ash.
And at every fire-fighter’s venue,
half-mast flags above dusty faces,
and black, everywhere,
the colour of tears.

Eugene Alexander Donnini

Recidivist

I once knew a bloke
who wouldn’t give to learn,
but stole to conceal;
his life, half lived,
his gift, half understood,
his perceptions, half real.

I once knew a bloke
who’d rather turn than face,
who’d turn up the music
to numb with grace;
whose life was always
a-sailing out beyond

those warning signs within,
where whisky’s scourge
of sentimental muses,
sailed and assailed
his veins and breath;

where sentence after sentence
brought no rehabilitation
or relief, but merely,
a deeper bruising
below the skin.
I once knew a bloke,
who’d rather sink, than swim.

Eugene Donnini