Pastoral After A Fifteen Year Marriage


I am the one in the window
Watching rain that doesn’t come down;
I'm the one in a landscape of sorrow
The bones grate toward the ground.

The light on the gumtrees falls sidelong
To colour paint off the leaftips in erase,
Only the water-wash grey in the clouds
Sticks to this palette, my face.

Seven kookaburra vice a garden fence
Sniping the vegie patch of last worms;
A grey feather falls as day fades, darkens
.... I lose in love taken to terms.

Time passes! but clover in flower's no pastime
Wind shakes the mulch leaves in squirm;
A flight of kookuburras down the evening
Is the last hurrah of the worm.

I am the one in a porthole window
Watching rain as it doesn’t descend;
I'm the one left in the sorrow
Where our sinking partnership ends.

Trentham, 1992

Wayne David Knoll