Going Barefoot

 

Shoes are unused

kicked off for summer.

I embrace the informality

of feet, bare as birth, as simple.

Nothing lies between

the earth and me,

hard packed dirt,

sun stored searing heat

in streets, on grass or rock,

the floors of cinemas,

sand and wooden piers,

toe-dug clams in mud,

the wide sloping floors of our old summer house.

My feet grow tough as hide,

meet surf and tiles and chewing gum,

darken sheets with where they’re from.

I cast aside the rest-of-year’s conventions,

those who think bare feet are crass,

know freedom and a half-forgotten wildness that’s rare,

a past once shared

with those who came before,

squeezed as they are

into summer.

Hatbox House

 

Painted red, then shades of gray

to keep four seasons’ weathering at bay,

the old hatbox of a house

bluntly faced the street.

Book-papered walls

whose titles she sees still,

Joseph Conrad wall to wall,

and Churchill.

The cellar told of stone.

Its furnace like a heart

pumped heat

to beat the cold.

Three sets of stairs, three floors

one banister to ride,

sliding down with squeaky thighs

its wooden hill.

Waiting rigid in the dark

for mother, father to return

drive the babysitter home

and give her back herself.

She knows each room,

closet, nook and roof,

windows, rugs and furniture,

its scent,

as closely as she knows her hands.

This hatbox house has kept her thoughts,

what she did, tried to say,

her dreams and fears, laughter, friends

now, as then,

when ten and after ten,

locked up away.

 

Nana Ollerenshaw

The Shallows

I’m at the edge

of a shallow world

wading through transparent weight

where sand, air and water wedge.

Hexagons of sunlight slide below.

Seaweed rolls slow motion

as the ocean breathes.

Its small heave of waves

flop in.

 

Suddenly minnows band.

Their shadows on the sand

multiply their number.

Miniature fish in a miniature sea

glint their silver sides in one direction

stream past as close as birds in flight,

then stop and mill,

their order lost,

regroup and

jerk away in fright.

 

I kick up balls of water

with thoughts made bright

by sudden unimportant sights,

the swell, the rise and fall,

refracted light, small stones

and now! by schools of minnows darting back.

Nana Ollerenshaw

 

Tea Bag Bay

Protected by a headland

Tea Bag Bay’s

a place she used to think a joke.

The Old bob up and down

in vertical positions,

capped, their spreading bodies

tightly held in lycra.

Saltwater brings them back their youth.

They bob and talk an easy comfort talk.

Coward’s Corner is the place’s other name.

No fear of being skittled here

or cast absurd upon the beach.

Now she’s a tea bag too

but glad to be

back in the sea

where she swam horizontal once.

Afterwards, enough to sit

and take it in

a still small square of peace within.

The sea breathes in and out

rhythmic as a heartbeat,

the casuarinas hang their mares’ tails aslant,

the coastline fades to distant haze

and people sit with eskies by their fold up chair

with all this day to spare

for Tea Bag Bay.

 Nana Ollerenshaw