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BRENDAN RYAN
[two poems]
The Mountain
- In the pitch darkness of a dream
- it is the type of shadow you can depend upon.
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- A conspicuous feature as seen from the headstones.
- Visible from all angles
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- it towers over cypress plantations,
- milkers following a trail of silage across a paddock.
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- I remember a ribbon of fire skirting the north-east ridge
- and my disappointment the first time
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- I took in the view of Kelly’s paddocks.
- Years latter, parts of my family were enveloped
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- in fog as we tramped upward
- past cattle troughs, ferns and lichened rocks.
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- It was as if we had been finally accepted
- by something we had been staring at
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- our whole lives. There was no view
- we were stuck with the people we had become.
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- It is only in memory that I lose my place
- and the mountain begins to rise up
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- like an image taking shape in water
- shadowing me across paddocks
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- until it owns me, until I return
- to finally see the mountain for what it is.
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- Woman Leaving a Farm
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- It’s not the beaten path that led
- to the burner or hurrying in rubber boots
- from the dairy to put the tea on.
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- Nor is it the stick she used
- for heaving washing into the spin dryer.
- It’s more the way the wind
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- filled the sheets on the clothes line
- and then ushered in each night
- blowing ash down the chimney.
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- Summer nights, walks after tea
- two figures dwarfed by paddocks
- walking down to the river
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- walking down through their children.
- Her day, framed by washing clothes
- a view of the tank stand beside the dairy.
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*
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- Shivering, she wakes to wedding photos
- and knick-knacks on the mantle piece –
- all the objects she needs to belong
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- reminding her of who she has become.
- A trophy house with strange trees,
- neighbours so close they keep their blinds drawn.
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- The streets surrounding her are pocked with retired farmers’
wives
- their weeks arranged like dinner settings.
- She keeps her distance from the kitchen window
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- wondering what to do if he comes in
- from the out-paddock and finds her
- dabbing at crumbs on the kitchen table,
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- a habit religiously maintained over forty years
- cannot locate her. Each day she loses hours
- the way her mother lost words in a nursing home.
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- It’s not the women who used to pop in
- for cups of tea, it’s not the farmhouse
- and those days without hot water.
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- It’s more the woman he used to know
- lost in the lounge room
- somewhere between the paddocks and the TV.
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