Poems: Winter, and The Bremer in Summer Rain

Winter

Alone with indoor thoughts

looking through the window at winter;

the Nandina that we call sacred bamboo

windswept all along the fence.

The cherry tree looks as if it’s waiting

for a bird; at last the little spinebill

arrives and makes the minutes still.

I take to books that bring a certain

kind of calm. I meet a true companion;

we talk as if the centuries were air.

I listen to him speak about failure

and success, how this or that goes on.

We agree that when the rain falls and falls

Like eight ply from the heavens,

there’s nothing better than a quiet house

somewhere warm, along the road of dreams.

The Bremer in Summer Rain

Bremer River, South Australia

I stood in the rain, in the cool,

after dry heatwave days,

the gully quiet, but for a magpie’s call;

rabbits ran from burrows round the rocks.

A grey heron flew across the riverbed

like a painted bird on Chinese silk.

He settled on a branch and stayed.

Stillness was embodied in his form.

He looked like a Modigliani version

of a bird, sculpted in that elongated way;

call it mystery, call it Zen,

things of the spirit, in rain.

Karen Blaylock lives and works in the Adelaide Hills. A writer of poetry and essays she has been published in literary journals, newspapers and anthologies in Australia, and with her haiku in New Zealand and America. Her collection of poems, The Saying of Names, was published in 2022.

Readers’ original and unpublished poems of up to 40 lines can be emailed, with postal address, to [email protected]. Submissions should be in the body of the email, not as attachments. A poetry book will be awarded to each accepted contributor.