Poems: Poet’s Words and At the Sink

Poets’ words

I like the way poets use few words

winnowed from the deep silos of the English language

to be painstakingly placed, precise and perfect

revealing coloured realms and voids of black

love and loss, the changing seasons

to portray a person,

to tell a story, evoke a mood,

share their inner selves

in the hope their sparse words

might

change a small part of the world.

At the sink

I’m standing by the kitchen sink

trying hard to think

what I’m looking for and why,

should give up

not even try?

Don’t waste your time

I hear a voice say.

How can you know where tomorrow is

when you’re still looking for today?

Following retirement from teaching in 2011, Pat Lee started turning jottings and memories recorded since childhood, into poems. In 2012, she joined Friendly Street, and was first published in that year’s Friendly Street Poets’ Reader, with her poems appearing in that anthology every year since. Her poems have also appeared in literary journals and poetry anthologies, throughout Australia, and overseas. Diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2006, Pat received an Arts SA Richard Llewellyn Arts & Disability Emerging Artist Grant, in 2014. Her first collection, Nudge the Morning, was published in 2017, and her latest, A Spot in Time, from which today’s poems are from, was launched in July this year.

Readers’ original and unpublished poems of up to 40 lines can be emailed, with postal address, to [email protected].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.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons / Heffloaf