On the hottest midwinter day on record

[Recent poem, an elegy for an old friend who died four years ago. The poem has just been published in the Grieve Poetry Competition Anthology 2018 of the Hunter Writers Centre. Took the postmodern photo at a recent sculpture show at Hillview Southern HIghlands.]

On the hottest midwinter day on record

i.m. Barbara Sterling

Now changes carry sharper edges,
cut deeper into the thin skin
of memory. The house just visible
now among the tangle of trees
from the fire-trail hacked through
your anarchically unfenced bush.

These days another person dies
every other day. Then always air
thick with silence, sudden cool breeze
soughing leaves, that dull ache
pulling memories out of now
like an overworked midwife.

Not even sure if it is your house,
the hardwood house I helped you build,
always loved being in, so small,
so large with the sheer force
of your life poor in means, rich
in spirit, your house a creaking
wooden boat with an unrailed, death-
defying deck leaping out into that
grey-green ocean of fire-loving trees.
Into all that silent, waiting space.

~ by Peter Lach-Newinsky on August 11, 2018.