Ron Pretty: Three Poems

The Light Fades

That time of day when the light fades

to its citrus tones and the air is still,

when distant sounds of children and trains

disturb the silence, that is the time I sit

looking out over the racecourse and the lake

waiting, my slow mind catching the scent

of distant fires and nearer passions, a dog

corrosive on its chain, the fading pulse

of cicadas. Soon I’ll light a candle to the dead,

those images diaphanous and fleeting

that float between the night and my dreaming.

 

She was the most obstinate of women; once

decided on her narrow path, no rage or reason

could tempt her. Grey-haired and aching

from a back beyond repair, her days were spent

on that list of good works she compiled

from iconoclastic texts. Neither pain nor penury

could deter her; but once as she stood

at the sink, staring out at a slate sky, I heard

a whimper, a shiver of weakness, a doubt

for once beyond the reach of any word,

a fear too deep for any consolation.

 

Pain she lived with for fifty years, her partner

in everything she did, as constant as prayer

but when she looked down that long fracture

in the fabric of being, like me she was afraid.

The light has faded from her eyes, the dead

branches of the gums are stark against

the smoke-grey sky, but as I wait here,

the fading noises of the night around me,

I knew and loved her, and know her fear.

 

 

 

Sheba

The town they walk through boasts a silken

layer of dust on tar and footpath,

 

streetlights haloed in desiccated mist; shutters

on shops reveal their delicate tracery of dust.

 

Handel is playing with my head. I watch them—
best man who fiddled at their wedding & lusted

 

for the bride. The Water Music Suite. I would not

risk Fireworks with tinder in the hills behind the town:

 

the stars are sharp enough, ready to strike

flame from lightning dry & crooked in the west.

 

A cur sits tonguing on the bare earth, dusty cats

skitter across the palings mewling for milk,

 

mewling for food, their tails like gritty flags

twitching behind them as they clutch at straws.

 

The two who walk the drought-begotten streets

were once a couple, but dust has driven them apart.

 

Side by side they walk, not touching for the heat,

not talking for dust on lips, their eyes dry,

 

their hands stranded by their sides, who once

believed that rain was birthright, the cottage

 

by the creek, the lucerne on the river flat,

their once and future green as clover.

 

They do not look at one another, only wonder

what it was betrayed them while I slide

 

a CD in the slot: Arrival of the Queen of Sheba.

Dust on my windowsill, I wait and listen.

 

 

Taking Care of Bertie

It is as I told you: unless you take care

to visit him often, he will grow wild and

unkempt. You might not think it to see

him relaxing there, he seems so passive

not even a thunderstorm would shake him

much less a pigeon. But let him out of sight,

neglect to come to him for a week or more

and you’ll see him wild as Byron, in need

of the calm control that only you can give,

responsible as you are. His neighbours,

anarchic, are also in need of firm hands

like yours, for weeds are always encroaching

and the man he was will soon be covered by

a rabble of weeds, his marble frame concealed.

 

Ron Pretty