Poem 226

Another of my ‘name’ poems (see Poems 135 and 203) that once upon a time might have been called pen portraits  – it’s based on a woman that Jill’s sister kept house for in Seatoun … she lived a life of great ease and privilege as if in deliberate response …

( I like sliding like scissors to the sand and the still life of a house as a rain barrel reflecting nothing … )

Rosa

Beyond the watered razored greenness
of lawn there is a hedge a road and then
a beach calm coastal water sliding like scissors
to the sand
                     the house is legendary its shade
     deep as money life held still inside it
     like old rain in a barrel
     beneath a cloudless sky

this cat from next door
has a nutzlos eye always weeping
she is forever 
                        finding it asleep on her decor
its ugly head propped 
on a stack of ironing
she neither shoos nor feeds it
but when she brushes too close and the cat leaps
scrabbling crazily on the varnished floor
she laughs

the waves crease
and plane in far away on the other side
of the hedge
                       she has another house in Sydney
      she went to see the harbour full
      of sails on Australia Day
she has friends
she sees when she chooses
and every year
                           a cruise

her accent is still deep
she still has a number
tattooed on her arm