The Girl from Brazil

(Market Client)

I did psychic readings at Sunday markets, 

approx. 1995 to late 2013. 


Soft, young,
excited by life.
I feel, empathic,
the suppressed fluttering
of breath wanting to surge.

A dentist in Brazil,
here she must study
again another year;
doesn’t complain, enjoys.

She longs for love.
I’m glad to see it coming
though not just yet.
First she will visit home.
'In March,' she agrees.

I see the large, warm family,
her brother’s new baby.
Smiling, she’s love
waiting to happen.




[Poem #82]

Old Colleague

'I need a new photo,' she says,
'To replace that one you took
nearly twenty years ago.'

On her website the new one
shows her whiter-haired,
still smooth-faced and lovely.

Upper Yarra Valley
Neighbourhood Centre.
Educators, enablers.

Our shared philosophies
expanded each other’s
gifts: teaching, writing.

Life moved us;
we never forgot. Now
her best friend turns up here.

Rapturous reunion
via email. We swap
news, our latest books.



[Poem #81]

Spirit Sister

'Younger than you,' the seer said.
 'Dark-haired. A Celtic cross
around her neck. She will be
important.' Years later, visiting
the Caldera, strangers
we embraced at her door.
I read her cards. 'You must
return here.'

Life paths almost identical, even
same-named healing centres
in different cities. 12 weeks
we rented her property. She returned,
we stayed close, worked magic,
wrote. Never needed any
explanations. She is
important.



[Poem #80]

'Marijuana in the Mail'

Hates the press for this headline
and publishing her name:
'BASTARDS!'
Always felt above the law.
Stoned at the time, or drunk?

Pleaded guilty anyway
for trying to post it –
to Edinburgh.
'Don’t they have dope
in Scotland?' someone said.

She can’t stay free
by pleading the need
of her brain-damaged son.
He’s 18 now, and smart enough.
She does a runner,
leaving him home alone.

Oh, stay away!



[Poem #79]

Abused and Neglected

He is afraid. Always.
I don’t know if he knows
the always. He knows
the sometimes,
the worst, the most
immediate. He knows
he has no-one but himself
to bring himself up. Not me –
not often enough, no blood
connection, and old
like grandmother, though I try
mothering, in my blunt
and sometimes cranky
way (when I’m most alarmed).
19 already and nowhere
to go, still nowhere
for escape.



[Poem #78]

Schemer

She greets me in the shop
as we stand at the counter.
Startled, I respond too warmly.

She makes the cow eyes at me.
Pale, dishevelled, she’s lost
her sleekness along with her game.

(Some are still fooled, most stand
with her intended victim.)
I look away and place my order.

Later her man whom I’ve never met
sends me drunken emails. I feel
intense rage – his or mine?



[Poem #77]

Expatriate Blogger

I 'met' her in her adopted city
turning the pain of her broken heart
into prose-poems that seared mine.
I thought them beautiful fictions,
then realised only truth
was that raw, that passionate.

She needed to leave the man,
his country and his family, all loved.
She needed her old home.
Returned, she lives in my adopted city
(I’m elsewhere now; we’ve never met)
begins writing new, beautiful ... fictions?



[Poem #76]

The Grandson

'Everyone says
leave him with his father,
can’t take a child to live
in a country like that.'

'What!' we said.
'You’ve been
the one constant
in his life.

'In South-East Asia
they’ll love
you beautiful blondes.'
She took him.

Too admired,
they couldn’t go out,
got mobbed.
Came back here.

Now he’s teenaged
tall and lean, big-eyed.
She’s given him
stepfather, step-brothers.

The other day
he hit her.




[Poem #75]

PS (years later) that last was an isolated incident, I'm relieved to say.

The Girl Next Door

A pretty three-syllable name
I never heard before.
Wasn’t sure at first
if she was girl or boy
despite long hair –
breasts just beginning.

She spoke softly, looking down;
liked playing with our cats,
asked their names.
I’d meet her walking
on the beach like me;
we’d smile briefly.

The older sisters
and little brothers
were noisy, laughing.
She: big-eyed, serious.
We began having
conversations, then they left.



[Poem #74]

Best Be Nameless!

She’s an offence
looking to be taken,
a deprivation
eager to be felt.

He puts his foot in it
innocently again,
is surprised again
by the sudden
sobbing reproaches.

Petite, shapely,
curly blonde
girl-next-door,
she looks happy
and as pretty
as a Christmas angel.

She looks sweet,
uncomplicated.
All she wants, she says,
all she longs for,
is her father’s love.
She stabs him repeatedly
and twists the knife.



[Poem #73]

'Grandpa Daddy'

The distant Grandpa,
the one I never met,
who lived across the water
like the rest of my Daddy’s
fabled, extensive family,
all those unknown
aunts, uncles, cousins.

I was grown
before I was told
of his love of the glass,
which took him so far
from Grandma.
A popular, dancing man,
charmer and flirt.

I still have the delicate
poem he wrote for me
when I was born.



[Poem #72]

Charming Billy

always looks joyous,
fixes my back quickly,
admires my vibrant shirt,
tells me that if I Google his name
– I already know, I’ll find
a noted American poet –
asks after the progress
of my own writing,
adjusts my neck adeptly,
says, 'That’s great,
get outa here!'
(American himself)
with a big grin,
adjusts the payments
to suit our budget,
treats every patient
as a treasured pal,
charms me.



[Poem #71]

The Cardinal

Took him in dislike
the first / only time we met:
the Church’s rising star
chairing the prison inquiry;
attentive, serious, seeming to care.
(I represented reform.)

Nothing of course happened.
I saw his report: contrary
to his reassurances on the day,
leaning hard to conservative.

Since, pedophile scandals
he failed to act on;
banning gay worship.

'Pompous, arrogant…' says my husband,
watching him pontificate on TV.

Too right.



[Poem #70]

10 years later, the Cardinal – having risen very high in the Church – was himself convicted as a pedophile.

The Witch

Slender.
Long, dark hair.
Softly flowing clothes.
She came to my market stall
requesting an aura drawing.

Afterwards, on impulse,
I asked her telephone number.
When she wrote her name, I said,
'You’re X’s Tarot student!'
'And you must be
the mentor she talks about.'

I invited her into the coven.
She’d been a Solitary.
Years later, coven scattered,
we two still meet for coffee,
swap books and DVDs.



[Poem #69]

A MySpace Friend

I first fell in love
with her mysterious photos:
flowers, landscapes, self-portraits
washed with unearthly colours;
still think her blue period
most beautiful of all.

Then I started reading
her words, at once mystical
and confessional – a journey
through alcohol, recovery,
depression, regeneration …

and permanent paths:
the friendships, the art,
while holding fast the hand of God.
Full lips, long hair, soft heart –
yet a warrior!



[Poem #68]

Peggotty

Forty years all but one day
older than me.

Soft fat woman,
voice like honey.

Lying gowned in flowing purple
one liqueur chocolate
in smooth fingertips.

Musk and lavender wafting
from a cushiony bosom.
A yielding cheek for kisses.

Her garden had swings
and winding paths,
nooks for hide-and-seek
among rhododendrons.

Gave me '18 Poems
by Dylan Thomas'
one shared birthday –
1962, my 23rd. I have it still.



[Poem #67]

Sharing, 17 years after writing, with Poets and Storytellers United, for Friday Writings #222: Legacies.  This lady's whole self was her legacy. (I started writing a new piece about her, then remembered I had this.)

The Man at the Next Table

Hardly noticed at first
absorbed in coffee and book
then the phlegmy cough intruded
loud, recurrent, unscreened by hand.
I raised my book higher between us.

Elderly. Weathered.
Baseball cap, t-shirt, work shorts.

Laughter. Interjections.
Was he communicating
with wife or friend at the counter?
Followed his gaze. No-one. But …
ah! someone invisible in the other chair.

Met him walking later.
Not so old after all. Maybe 50.



[Poem #66]

Cross-posted from my poetry blog The Passionate Crone, where it appears as: 2009 April Challenge 6.

Enemy Alien

I was fifteen.
My posh new stepmother
drawled with rounded vowels.
Stank.

Scent heavy, sickly.
Eventually I understood
it overlaid
the reek of spirits.

Stout stomach;
fluttery, floral
afternoon-tea-party frocks.

She stole the dress
Mum bought me,
sold it for charity.
(Someone saw.)

Hid my most treasured books
under the hedge
to rot in the rain.
Blamed my little brother.

Yes,
she was mad.
I’m alive, she’s dead.



[Poem #65]

The Marine Biologist's Mother

News: a suicide
far across the world.
I didn’t know him.
But I remember
his mother’s words:
‘O golden child
the world will kill and eat.’

It ate her first.
She never saw him grow
so like his father.

Didn’t know her either –
but through her poems
we think we know.

‘Famous because of scandal’
the know-alls say.
Perhaps.
But loved for her words,
beauty and passion
living on.



[Poem #64]

Occupation, Poet

Disappeared three days
after high-grade grass,

just wandered off
into the dark.

But mostly drunk and rude.
Forgiven for talent.

‘Soul of an accountant,’ remarked
the portraitist, painting that.

Mistook me once
for acquiescent. Disabused.

Poetry was blood and breath.
His words could sing or kill.

Moved, seeking the son
abandoned years earlier.

I came across his elegy
for the young man's drug-death,

telling their whole story
honestly ... wept.



[Poem #63]