Sugary Spoons

There’s a novel with a middle-aged woman

saved for the narrative’s centre, and she’s quiet

amongst the other characters so splashy

with their youth. We see her once, palms upturned

at a farm’s kitchen table, her daughter briefly

back home, who notices her mother as if for

the first time, asks herself what has this woman

done with her life? Turn the page, scene superseded

by twentysomethings working, drinking, screwing through

their anguish, the woman outshone, stilled in her chair,

detritus of bowls and sugary spoons, yet that is

where your novel is, right there. I’ve carried her with me

so often, especially now, my breakfast tea growing

cold in its cup, watching the pigeons getting laid on my

arbour, causing the white rose to prematurely shed.

Claws locked on the greening wooden edge we let lie tilted

after the storm’s push. That dawn, opening the side door

to feel the garden’s windswept leaping, ghosts in a rush,

and I hurried to our bed to press my ribs and breasts against

your sleeping back. Arbour repaired, now steady for this

downy shudder. Tongue of sunflower seeds rocking in a

coconut’s mouth. Muesli softening in my bowl.

Rebecca Goss