RITES OF ARRIVAL
THE GREAT DEPRESSION
On the scrubbed deal table there is
a single jar of stiff and sugary jam,
my grandmother has made
from Moreton Bay figs
because there is no substitute
and they are the kind accident
of wild fruits and Spring.
The sun in its peculiar path
and enigmatic journey
will catch the small glass jar
and refract slowly
through its reds and browns.
My father will spread some on
what scraps of bread and toast remain
down a string of hungry years:
economists in time
will fix and date and classify,
and try to explain
by stats and tomes and tables.
But licking a sweet-sour spoon
of his mother's confection:
the sort of skimp and save
is known now could ruin the liver
and damage the bowel -
he is transfixed by brief sunshine,
through a jar of jam.
LIVES FROM A COUNTRY TOWN
i.
The woman in the bakery
has eyes like empty cake tins
her skin the colour
of dough before baking
the breadslicer ate her thumb and
she has cooked all of her fingers
over and over again
her spirit drained into 20 years
of getting yeast to rise
yet every day the town eats up
all that she can make.
ii.
An old slow-eyed farmer
in a sweat rubbed khaki shirt
still rolls his cigarette beneath
the SERV-WEL shop verandah
spits in small damp denominations
and talks endlessly of rain
sitting in shadows
dust beneath his patient
grinding boot-heel
still powders into light and here
he is the final metaphor for life.