Afternoons in and out of Paradise

by Julie Watts


the loose-throated peals
of children playing, float across
fences, and into everyone's afternoon.

I remember one like this

shouts, climbing walls
crawling through keyholes
leaping into sick rooms

where he lay, dragging
his boated chest
over the barnacled air

spat into jars
raged as best he could
his wintering world

his wife calling out

turn down the volume
of our play, our high time
to scream

the afternoon scuttling itself

images of white sheets
disgusting jars
life at the other end, looming

incomprehensible

yet enough to haunt the ignorance
of our greenest days
uncomfortable with our plucked

fruit, yet comfortable with the distance

such a distance, a forever –
breathe in and out
and it's gone –

that afternoon like this afternoon

with the high spirits of children
thrilling the autumn
trees

I think of him, long gone

and ungrasped
by the scattering pirates, boarding
their backyard ships.

 

Julie Watts is a Western Australian writer and Play Therapist. She has been published in various journals and anthologies including: Westerly, Cordite, Australian Poetry Anthology, Australian Love Poems 2013 and the Anthology of Contemporary Australian Feminist Poetry. In 2016 she won The National Association of Loss and Grief Award and was short listed in the Newcastle Poetry Prize. Her first poetry collection, Honey and Hemlock, was published in 2013 by Sunline Press.

Previous
Previous

Tranquil

Next
Next

Song of the Water Lilies