Three Poems

 

Witness

After the painting February, by Wim van den Toorn

 

As it escapes

snow leaves fingerprints

on the roof,

 

a crime scene for Spring

to investigate that morning

when it pulls up.

 

Half buried behind the house

trees wait for questioning,

some broken by winter.

 

Near the front door

a bright shrub

dissolves evidence

 

but rocks reappear

like memories

that waited through the cold.

 

Today, south is important

a compass point

for direction, warmth.

 

Window panes

glow like headlights

as a car drives away.

 

Then the sun

moves in to X ray

anything left.

 

Ross Donlon

 

 

Mulberries

 

I first tasted mulberries in my cousins’ tree

a bright green cave with hanging gems

we picked and sucked, each face smeared

purple. No rebuke from watching adults,

 

who bowed to us then raised containers,

libations offered to grubby cherubim

on mulberry laden clouds, since each tin

returned childhood in a teeming vessel.

 

They were food too luscious to be fruit,

reminding us of sugared jubes and juice

inside a globe filled by midday sun

and toys, a mulberry compendium

 

almost camouflaged by emerald leaves;

a dome of pleasure in a children’s tree.

 

Ross Donlon

 

 

 

Chinese Neighbours—Ashfield c. 1950

 

They never mowed.

They never did edges.

They never pruned or cut back.

 

They never gardened at all.

You never saw them

unless they were shades

 

who sometimes flicked

through the closed gate

like a card trick.

 

They hid their washing,

our Hills Hoist an empty icon

inside a crown of bindis.

 

They even ignored our weather.

Closed winter and summer

their windows reflected us back at us.

 

Ross Donlon