Florence

 April 17 Word of the Day: Florence

 

Where does the day go, and the night

David’s already said goodbye

No flights out and, in fact, no flights

Churches declare the reason why.

 

David already waved goodbye

Gaze on his marble flesh no more.

Churches declare the reasons why

Santa Croce forlorn at morn.

 

No gazing on those supple forms

Again, and ingrained imagine

Santa Croce at dawn forlorn.

We’ll not behold their likeness again.

 

Again and again he imagined

Dante, he knew, never went back.

We will not see his like again

His great plans all done and dusted.

 

Dante, you know, never went back,

Self-isolated in his cell.

All the planes are done and dusted

Only shells of their former selves.

 

Self-isolated in our cells

We have the words, we have the snaps

Only shells of their former selves

Those schemes, vacations, dreams and dares.

 

We have the words, we have the naps.

Where does the day go, and the night

In dreams of vacant doors and squares.

No flights out and in. Fact: No flights.

 

[August 2020 & April 2026]

 In online poetry group during lockdown, as an exercise I invited members to write a poem about a city that they currently could not visit: “The poem can go anywhere. It can be descriptive. Memories may fill the poem. Longing to return is possibly at work. By imagining the city then and now and even in the future, you play with one of poetry’s strongest devices, which is tense. The reader is left with a strong sense of the city.” I chose the pantoum and wrote three poems for the group (Florence, Jerusalem, Tokyo) in August 2020, which are released here, with little alteration, in April 2026.

Coal

 April 16 Word of the Day: Coal

 

1966 is famous for ‘Norwegian Wood’ and our school excursion to the Morwell opencut mine. Changing trains at the splendiferous Caulfield Station, we stepped into a Gippsland red rattler, pulled down the windows, and stared with open eyes towards our rapidly approaching destination: the yawning abyss of Yallourn. Colossal powerhouses streaming with steam overwhelmed our childish expectations. Mountainsides of prehistoric coal met our collective consciousness, the magical fossil that brings new, if transient, life. After the first half hour of this industrial-sized vision we were wondering why we hadn’t been taken instead to the circus, or a movie at the crystalline Capitol Theatre, or several hours of the zoo staring back at us. Interface with coal has always been a one-way exchange, as is the nature of fossil fuels: they are all give and we are all take. This was part of the educational purpose, perhaps, of our excursion and if it was then it was a quick lesson. Artistic value was in short supply. Truckloads of briquettes rattled past towards the depots of Melbourne, jostling about like darkness visible. Their heavy sooty smell hung in the evening side streets of childhood as neighbours stoked their heaters to a perfect orange-red glow. The idea that coal needed to be phased out, in fact should fade out as soon as possible, had never entered their minds, or been entertained by public decisionmakers. We knew it was unlikely that if we waited long enough on our excursion the compound pressure on the coal would turn it into diamonds, just more coal, of which we had seen enough already. Childhood was a time of boundless energy and infinite possibilities.

Gash

 April 15 Word of the Day: Gash

 

White cells rush in to stop the flow though it’s

only the vegetable knife, only onion, the red blood

shines and sticks to things. Skin. The course of events

has something to do with it: having to wait

‘interminably’ for whatever: just those two

quarrelling on the escalator got you. Down. Why

can’t they find somewhere else? Versus, that is

how quarrels actually look! Then the heat,

in the workroom and ‘someone’ was not being upfront.

When they act like a prat you wonder what’s your

part: do I overreact, sound usual, absorb it all

in practised silence, say something to clear the atmosphere,

what? We know what happens through mini-disasters,

we keep on going. But damage control is only

half the battle. The red swells up in its svelte way.

Never afraid of it, but you know it means

something else, alack: the day has been loose, hectic,

unsatisfactory. Apply elastoplast on the washed area. 

 

Loose? Hectic? Unsatisfactory? Did you say that

on the spur of the moment cutting your thumb?

Actually so even-handed, and you have to be easy

to finish cooking anyway: exact litres, tablespoons

and minutes, serendipity of an extra flavour,

the art of the spicy aroma or lifting boiling

water off the heat. The outside goes quiet.

The gush heals of its own accord. The night cools,

No doubt an essential purpose of cool nights.

In its place, the sign of a ‘hot’ day: a red

stripe. In its place, steady breathing, ask me

to accept the forces not so aching blind.

The gauze bandage an alternate flesh colour for those

who eat too many oranges. A soft distraction

from a page of night-reading. Drifting mind

could escape all those bad moves, mistaken

accusations. Retract them, even.

You could be walking away like

a perfect hermit who has found sophia.

 

[September 2020, retrieved and reworked April 2026]