Robyn Lance: Four poems

Cemetery by the Sea

Those in the know straddle

splintering cracks in the dirt track

 

ignoring the keep out subtleties

of closed farm gates,

 

their reward a handful of graves

from then and now

 

laced with grass and graced with head stones

at drunken angles.

 

Some have been beheaded

but crinkle-edged lichen

 

clustered like tiny tatted doilies

dignifies an upright cross

 

and harlequin tiles

cover death in black and white.

 

Forebears rest in an eternal

location, location, location.

Robyn Lance

Cool climate

At the closed café door

a father struggles to couple his toddler’s toggles.

Lunch ladies smile down.

Ask his name.

Jemima.

A killer pause before their rushed gush

over her lovely eyes—such long lashes—

shivers in the silence of its

Cool Reception.

Robyn Lance

Mirror image

The image in the mirror

is my mother

is me.

The image in the mirror

is my daughter

is me.

I am the mirror

in which my child sees

what she will be.

Robyn Lance

Staring down the barrel of disaster

An hour passes.

Now we have to go before he does,

before they do, the last 300 sheep.

We’ve changed for work in town when the late driver

with his tiered truck-and-dog backed against our loading ramp

reports One got away. I chased it for a bit but it got away.

Just one thinned its way through an impossible gap and fled to freedom.

Forever the last Lance sheep on Stillwater.

The farm’s sold, all stock to be gone by the week’s end

and this one wants to stay home.

The driver pushes and prods tailenders onto the truck.

Leftovers with no group to join—ram lambs that slipped the neutering ring,

ewes with newborns at foot impregnated by said ram lambs.

The One That Got Away denies fences their natural advantage,

penetrates not one but three and speeds non-stop to the furthest corner.

The ute accelerates with us inside thinking the worst.

Mustering a single sheep is the task of the naive or fools.

We front him and in that moment he turns

and pounds back across the paddock.

We force the pace thinking to run it down and offer it a lift to its destiny

but it passes through the open gate into the lane,

charges towards the distant yards,

front hooves hitting the ground in a powerful prance,

a thundering dance,

clears the next gateway,

bolts into the holding yard

(the farmer chasing, breathing hard),

on through every pen and gate, up the ramp

and, wham, slams into the truck’s rear gate.

We slide the steel across.

Unprompted, the ram races up and in,

stands panting, head down as though ashamed of causing this much fuss.

Sosorry,don’tknowwhatgotintome,won’tdoitagain,promise.

We lock eyes and laugh.

The driver manoeuvres the vehicle out and down the lane.

Thirty years rearing, shearing, docking, drenching, needling and wheedling sheep.

We watch them go.

Robyn Lance