Suzanne Edgar: Six Poems

The Haircut

 

I felt especially honoured

when allowed, this once,

to take a pair of scissors

and, ever so timidly, gingerly,

trim a few silver curls

from your beloved head.

 

I snipped a few tufts

to even up the back

then stopped, afraid

to go beyond the bounds

of what was necessary.

Zeal was inappropriate.

 

When I bent to sweep them up,

the few fallen tendrils,

and throw them into the dustbin,

I thought to myself, perhaps

I should have kept some,

saved them for later.

 

 

 

Moonset 6 a.m.

 

This morning on the front step

I had the luck to lift my eyes:

swooning there in cloudless skies

was a coloured moon, twin of the sun,

and stained with the same blood-orange light.

Slipping down from a great height,

it met the mountains’ rim of blue

and woke the moths on the western plains.

 

 

 

 

Bad Man Dreaming

 

“I read in the paper,” my husband said,

“Javier Gomez died.”

 

He was the crim who smashed glass

to climb into our bedroom

and grab my golden wedding ring

with a sapphire blue as air.

My mother’s too.  Never saw them again.

 

The cops ignored this “minor crime”

until I gave them a call, mentioned

our friend the chief of police.

Jav, it seemed, was a major dealer

running heaps of jobs.

 

The day he came before the court

a social worker on the case

sat his mother with me.

“He no crime,” she wept; “Is my good son.”

I patted her trembly hand.

 

In black leather with hair to match,

he rose as each offence was called

for breaking, entering, stealing.

“Guilty, your honour!” he said

30 times; not looking back at his mother.

 

The judge awarded ten years.

They moved him round a lot:

Goulburn Maximum Security;

Junee Correctional Centre …

Back to Goulburn; he took up books.

 

One dark time, Easter eve,

I sent a letter: bitter, naïve,

sort of victim impact thing.

Told him what the rings had meant

to a grieving orphan woman.

The prisoner wrote from his cell,

clever contrite replies:

off the drug, feel so free, blah de blah …

He sent me his student essays,

even tried a reverse-charge call.

 

Cock and bull, my husband said.

The correspondence lapsed,

contrition couldn’t stay the course.

I was robbed and I was conned.

But I worry about his mum

 

for now the black intruder is dead

who came to plunder and prey.

And I am left lamenting

the lack of a sapphire love ring,

as if it were a lost soul.

 

 

 

 

 

The Chigaree

 

A cheeping thornbill on the lawn

with sunlight-buttered rump

sings to welcome signs of dawn

as cheerful birds will do

 

but he is more the subtle sleuth

that twitches stalks apart,

investigating cryptic earth

in a beetling underworld.

 

Arrested by a skilful tweak,

insects meet their end

caught in a ruthless thornbill’s beak

and never seen again.

 

 

 

His Voice

 

Today, the strangest waking dream.

Like any normal dream, it seems:

my dad looks into my childhood room

at dusk, the light a sultry gloom.

 

Wringing his hands, he shakes his head

at my mother’s body on the bed.

She is, by now, just three days’ dead:

his face becomes a mottled red.

 

(Why did she choose my room to lie

in, drug herself and die?

“Look what I’ve done to you,” he intones.

I want more remorse; some tears, a moan.

 

He went and I came to; I knew

the words in this odd rendezvous

were never spoken by him; too bad.

It’s only … I wish he had.

 

 

 

 

One Hundred Times

 

At my grandfather’s table,

no talking during the meal;

chew each mouthful 100 times.

No staring if your grandpa

 

licks meticulous fingers

to mop up crumbs

from his bread-and-butter plate.

Think of children starving in Asia.

 

And eyes off the white napkin

as he dabs at strands of moustache

or hurrumphs a rumbly throat

and sips from the cut glass tumbler.

 

We all chewed faster than Grandpa

but none of us scraped her chair

to rise and leave the room

until he was finally finished.

 

Suzanne Edgar