Marilyn Peck: Two Poems

Soon I Will Stop Giving Unasked-for Advice to Giles Auty

Soon I will stop giving unasked-for advice

in the hopes of an echo of something nice

inferred in return.

I’m not sure what exactly is preferred;

an agreement, praise for perspicacity

or an audaciousness of thought indicated

with bated breath?

I guess I must be approaching old age

when I want to have a label of sage

written about me. A sagacious author perhaps?

Like Giles Auty perhaps?

When writing about other critics

of contemporary art, he is very smart.

I remember once when Giles was judging

a regional art competition in the north.

Preselected by lesser judges to save time, perhaps,

Giles minded and insisted that he inspect

all the rejected art stacked in a back room.

He reinstated everything and

one of the ignobly ignored pieces won an award.

His subsequent speech to the assembly

was witty and knowledgeable. He was lauded.

He goes on today in marvellous vein

about intelligible criticism or scholarship today

and all I can add to that is to say

Hooray!

Marilyn Peck

The Girl in the River

The girl in the river found tektites. She searched

amongst catfish and frogs, she perched

on diluvial rocks, in water,

like any sedentary river’s daughter.

She sifted, shifted sand and pebbles

in thin and broad-leafed bevelled

weeds. Little fish swam, nibbled

at her toes, as shrouded shadows quibbled

at the taste of her feet in sun-heated

water. Close to the river bank, depleted

and denuded by a neighbour’s cattle,

she dressed for daylight’s battle.

The skirts of her armour floated,

and the edge of her bloated

clothing, clotted and drifted at a tangent.

All was silence, ’til plangent

laughter of jackass-jokers intruded.

In context with the river’s secluded

care, her hair drifted down

with the weight of her gown;

snagged in riparian grass and sedges,

in the mud at the brackish water’s edges.

High banks, with Richmond Birdwing vine,

on which Richmond Birdwing butterflies dine,

rose steeply away, from the water’s runnel.

The trees at the top formed a tunnel.

Marilyn Peck