SARAH DAY

Crossing Over

You came and went, sampling knowledge
with a querying tongue,
licking the fat
chewing thoughtfully on the bone
finally trying my disingenuousness
waved at the end of a fork -
what is meat made of?

Your subconscious was figuring it out
hurtling images out of the dark
like the little grey donkey
burning in the field
alone, braying to the deaf heavens.
That night you covered your ears
from a sorrow that tore even through my dreams;

Another time, screaming, you watched
a hare run for its life
from the slicing knife,
I see that leg as you dreamed it
sailing through the forest’s air
butcher in mad pursuit, implacable.

On the street
you pointed to the dead weight in the window,
stared relentless at the stainless steel
hooking those thin achilles tendons.

Mother Goose helped...

and the slips, like saying lamb
instead of chop. Give-aways.

Even when all shots were called though,
I couldn’t admit the fraudulence
behind Flossie and Mary’s little lamb;

I wanted you at three
to be imperious,
to maintain the rage
keep things black and white

But it was already too late,
you had already crossed over into the grey
with me.

Sarah's poem originally appeared in 'Tribute to Gwen Harwood', which included paintings, poems and prose from the 1996 Poets & Painters Exhibition, at Dick Bett Gallery, Hobart. Sarah's poem was coupled with a painting by artist Alex Wanders.

Sarah explains a little about the writing of 'Crossing Over'.

The relationship between us and the animals that we eat is ambivalent territory. I remember going to a reading of Gwen's at the Tasmanian Museum in the mid 1980's in which she read a number of poems that spoke through powerful imagery from the perspective of various beasts of the earth. One of them was 'Night and Dreams'.

'I come to you in a dream of ages/past,' sings the crab whose opening monologue anticipates his imminent death by boiling. Sixty years on he still inhbits the narrator's dreams. Festooned among salad on the dinner table, the resurrected Crab tells sick jokes and beckons the speaker towards her imminent death.

SARAH DAY was born in England and grew up in Tasmania.

Awards for her books include the Judith Wright Calanthe Queensland Premier’s, the Judith Wright ACT, the University of Melbourne Wesley Michelle Wright Prize and the Anne Elder Award. In 2002 her New and Selected Poems was published by Arc in UK. It was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Awards and received a UK Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Sarah has been resident at the BR Whiting Library in Rome, has read at writers’ festivals around Australia and been a guest at the Festival de Poesie in Paris in 2001 and 2006, at King’s Lynn in England 2002 and 2017, and University of Lisbon 2011. Sarah’s poems have been set to music by British composer Anthony Gilbert. Sarah was poetry editor of Island Magazine for seven years, teaches English and Creative Writing and has been a member of the Literature Board of the Australia Council. In 2017 her story In the Dark, won the Alan Marshall Short Story Competition.

Sarah maintains a web presence at Sarah Day.