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.