PROLIFERATION TREATY POEMS

Monday 18 Feb
4:50 am

Yesterday on our way to “Wade in the Water”
I said to Mary, stepping down those inland sea-floor
stone steps at Federation Square, I said,
“I feel LUCKY! How lucky I am to be able to
choose what to do with this day, a whole month
after learning I have a chronic disease whose treatment
will disrupt my life. Lucky!” I think I may have skipped
a step.
The heat this morning a blanket.
I haven’t slept long or deeply.
My body’s ruse to use each moment for something
worth breathing for? I will say so, and make this early rising
somehow lucky. By having it to write about.


* "Wade in the Water" is the title of a DVD which was being launched,
about the singing group called South of the River and their founder who
had breast cancer and sung her way through the treatment phase and
is hale and hearty five years on.

5am

No tumbling trucks on the freeway,
no starry night jumbo jets heading west.
Yet.
And yet – not the silence of eternity.
I hear a sound like slumber, thought waves,
a susurration in my garden
as it wheels and deals in rapid growth.
Undercover.

I’m just not going to die if it hurts my loves.
It’s not my turn
Yet.
And yet – this eternity of being awake,
waiting for the alarm clock’s seven am news.
Is this my mind’s trick to prolong life itself?

The trucks begin sorting out the night air, pushing
into it, barging through now, forming tunnels
of continuous roaring echoes,
each one from its grim lips.
Around them the insistent silence
attends to dew and stretching roots, tendrils
reaching up and out, entwinement.
Underground.

Today, Mum goes to Bingo with friends,
Mikaela walks to school with friends,
I make and keep appointments
with doctors, new friends of my healthy self.
Tuesday 19 Feb

Standing on the brink
of a blue-sky day,
red-skirt-swinging-
sassy-unshaven-legs-
I’m-58-and-who-cares
day
I run the shower
gently; scars have
stopped flinching,
I can touch the blue
dyed spot, forget to
ask what it is (not bruise).
Jan:
she’ll know, in-my-plan
Jan, sit-on-the-floor-
in-my-ward, listening-
to-stories-and-drama,
making-no-apologies-
for-cancer, breasts,
drains, drips or scans –
Jan.
Sitting on the edge
of my purple-spread
bed at home, not yet
ready for work, lucky
to be alive and loved
day.


Wednesday 20 Feb

I’m having a Bad Night.
No sleep now, cold, and
the scar tissue pulling sharply,
aching as if to say,
“Don’t relax. Fight. Let’s get
back to the Good Times,
before...” And I’m not relaxing.

Can’t you see, scar, how
my jaw locks, my breath
shortens, how I am stiff,
hugging Zonta’s pink pillow,
my whole upper body
trying to have a Good Night.
I promise you scar, you’ll
feel Much Better in the morning.
Now, sleep.

Thursday 21 Feb

Exercise creates energy, they say,
so I walked, and lethargy
(that good ol’ enemy)
just rolled away.
I think it saw the wild paddocks
down Grey Street and cut loose,
or flew a coop.
Anyway, I had enough energy,
Then, to relax.
A poem without facts!


Friday 22 Feb
Turner Street Medical Centre

Waiting room – purple and maroon.
Or aubergine and plum? Chairs, that is.
A cheap brown formica table with
brown steel legs. Untidy magazines.
A child urging mother, tones –
not words – communicating.
Cricket on the P.A. system. Words
indistinguishable, but tones tell us
the batsman almost got caught out!
Interrupted by Doctor Singh and her
song: making sure I understand
every word.



Saturday 23 Feb

The aches.
The pains.
Stabbings.
Shootings.
Hear about it
every night
on that TV News.
Aggressive terms
for nerve ends
healing.
Good Pain!
Ouch.





Sunday 24 Feb

White cockatoos careering across
newly forested back yards
of estate housing.

I’ve been lying here, planning
furniture buying, shifting, removal
to make way for new styles
of life and work.

Thoughts like white cockatoos,
followed by chirruping wrens,
plaintive crows, magpie solos,
others ...
And their wings.


Sunday 2 March
2:24 am

I danced!!!
Oohhhhh!! I danced!
The music was me and was in me
and I was the music, my legs, my arms, my body, my eyes and ears
and something internal – my heart was in it; and this all
was the music. It danced through me.

Re:Pugsley Buzzard jazz piano night at Bacchus Hill Winery with Mary, Anne, Elizabeth, Heth, Carolyn, Phillip, Marc, Vicki, Peter. Sat 1 Mar.


Friday 7 March
Healing

These two carcases or torsos
That once pressed tight,
Demanded rights, hurt,
Too close, now both cut.
Bad shit removed, intruders.

Always in each others’ way,
Unwelcome interruptions,
Now cell-mates, skin souls,
Two human beings with faulty
Wiring, and a son, can think now,
All creatures are truly one.




Wednesday 12 March, very early

Jennie, you cannot
Start regretting choices
Just because
You’re awake early
And there’s nothing
To do, nothing
To distract you!


Wednesday 12 March, later
Walking the Lerderderg Loop, High Noon.
Words as Camera.

Cypress hedge has a faint aroma
even when squeezed by a hot hand.
Beyond, unseen, a tractor
sizzles as it works. What work is this?
To my right, creamy matt apples
and massed berry canes are
chaotic, not ripe for the picking.
Rounding the Cool Store: I come upon
a forklift driver, hanky tight
over nose and mouth, red and white
scarf wrapped from skull to chin,
and over all, the conical hat of straw.

Back on the river side of the walk,
I noted two men leaning forward
from a truck’s tray, plucking sickly
red lettuce seedlings from
new-sown rows.
Now, on a carpet of emerald,
two gangs of twenty-five crouch,
one gang orange, the other lime,
harvesting mature soft green lettuce.

They are all so professional – the workers,
the driver, the gear, the machines
sticking seedlings in earth precisely.
This earth gives and gives, no longer
the province of swamp and bog; for
one hundred and thirty years
it’s yielded to incessant tillage.
Rivers receded, sank, now form puddles
between batches of reed or fallen trees.

This alluvial treasure plain
soaks up our voices. I hear
nothing as I walk, except
my crunching soles, a magpie,
urgent trucks with their
double-barrelled containers,
and the sneaky sound
of warmer winds. I’m now
hot and sweaty, and I haven’t
pulled one lettuce out of
this generous ground!