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SALLY MANN
I joined the Workshop last September, after attending the launch of the last anthology. All of these poems were written this year.
THIS BED IS A BOAT
This bed is a boat and
All I love aboard.
As if our love could evaporate,
Vaporise, solidify,
The metamorphosis of life
Stirs within me.
I cup your hand beneath mine,
Arching a curve
Our baby stirs,
Can you feel it move?
The moment's sanctity
Making me whisper.
This is ours.
Our bed is a boat
And all I love aboard.
As if in some cavernous deep
The throaty animal cry
Of pain
I hear
Is mine.
Swept under,
Engulfed,
The wave hits and holds me down,
Gasping,
Grasping,
Drowning panicked
For your hand
My nails bite deep,
'Where is my haven?'
My body riles against me,
Pains possession.
Muscles gather,
Knot, surge down,
And she is born
Into your hands.
And this is where the storm has brought us;
A dishevelled bed,
Awash with lazy sun;
She lies between us,
Dwarfed against your back,
And yawns
A kitten pink mouth.
She reaches a grasping hand towards me,
My uneasy resentment stirs;
Her smallness is a guise,
This is the hand that steers us.
FOR NANA ROSE
With the boldness of a child
I turn your hand in mine,
Pinch your skin and count it fall.
Colder, marked with age,
As we talk it clasps and presses
To the urgency of what you say.
Thinking I've never heard before
What I know by heart,
You tell me of your early love;
I wonder at the grip of loss,
Stronger than the dulling years
And search your faded eyes for what he saw.
Lay out before me the older times,
Their wisdom hard learned,
The dreams you set aside,
None must be lost.
My roots run deep,
I drink in the past.
THE NIGHT OF THE GREAT STORM
I slept the night of the Great Storm,
Right through.
All the while it raged and lashed
About the house,
Inside I slept
A tree with flaying branches,
Came to crashing
Through the fence.
All brittle snapping,
Wild earth flying,
Branches scraping,
Felled like something alien on the lawn.
I watched my father the next morning,
In angry rage
Pick up that tree-invader
On his chest,
And fair carry it
Tremble-kneed,
Pivoting back,
Heaving and panting
And toss that trunk back
Out of our garden.
Amazed I had watched,
Pressed at the glass
Of my bedroom window.
So why lie awake this long quiet night?
Words come reeling,
My voice and yours;
Jagged words,
Their fingers flaying
Tearing inward,
Crashing homewards,
Broken reasoning,
Your accusations.
And sleep deserts me to this affliction,
Who will carry off this invasion?
Will I rebuild the fence around me?
THE WOMAN WHO WAS BATTERED
The woman who was battered
Stares at me over dinner.
She looks fifty, she looks happy,
Her perm is growing out and
She's wearing dated make-up.
Caught off-guard,
Mid-spin, double chinned,
Toasting the camera at a party.
She is there again at breakfast,
A front page colour picture.
I shade her eyeshadow with pencil
While I natter on the phone.
I wonder how she'd feel
This woman who was murdered,
If she could hear my saying,
They could have found a better photo!
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