Bellwood

She drives past bulls behind fences
to reach the cottages that
sit primly at the water’s edge.

Purple flowers adorn the dry hillside,
amethysts around a sun-burnt neck.

A pin oak extends delicately
towards the sky. Horses mull.

Earlier, on the open road her car flanked a train
as it probed the landscape, like a man entering a woman.

On her stereo, Alanis Morisette’s lyrics blare
‘this is in praise of the vulnerable man.’
The words summon his face like an avatar:
sad clear eyes, thin-lipped mouth, jutting nose
swimming up in her mind like insistent fish.

Hours later, drunk, she leaves the birthday party,
to walk to where she will sleep that night
and lies on her bed, listening to the sounds of frogs
calling out across the water.
Laughter floats in through her open window,
like a half-drawn breath.

She remembers his words about her poems:
earnest, direct, removed.
Offering structure, a skeleton beneath flesh.

She scrawls in her notebook as a swimmer, fearful, under water
might search the opacity for something recognisable.
She writes tentatively, as one standing up, walking to shore
might feel mud and soft lake moss beneath her feet, yielding.

Sarah Frost
http://writinginto.wordpress.com