arcs in time

I am the world tree
I am the woman, my branches reaching
I am the serpent, entwined
This is a story ancient and common
My roots reach around a globe
I feel all and know all
I am light and desire
And I created the earth
I shed my self and the woman remembers
I stroke the tree bark and it reminds me
Diamond-skin and innocence
The snake slithers my length and it awakens me
Tremors and earth-shudders, gentle and huge
Some tell that she stole from me
Others that I gifted a dreamtime,
Rainbow sparkling. Some that I tempted,
Seductive, knowing, a wickedness in my glint.
All the tales are true.

For B.W.

At home, she tries on voices,
accents echoing around rooms.
She says she can’t hold one down,
that she is sliding towards
a future language, not yet invented.
She spends her days planning
for disasters she hopes won’t happen.
Her life is filled with stockpiles,
logistics, anthrax, children and transport.
She yearns. She wishes for passion.
She listens intently. She knows
the names of every flower she sees
and somehow, that makes a difference.
She is rebuilding her nest and in it
she places feathers for comfort,
red grass for colour, amethyst
for intellect, iron for strength.
There is a right way  to weave
it all together and she straightens
each piece into place. The words
come more easily these days.

For David Hicks, five years in Guantanamo Bay without charge

They torture him,
Because he is Muslim
Because he fought on the wrong side
Because he is different from them
Yet we do nothing.
They create laws with an eerily familiar ring,
Because they cannot see past their ideals
Because their victims no longer seem human
Yet we do nothing.
Just like a generation of Germans before us.
Just like a generation of Rwandans before us.
Why?
Because the sun still shines
Because making love still feels good
Because he just called again and I miss him
Because I argued with my boss
Because that idiot just cut me off
Because the baby was crying
Because the children need their lunch
Because I’ll miss the train if I don’t hurry
Because reading a book is my escape
Because my new laptop will arrive
Because I was writing something down
In case I forgot, in case I remembered,
In case I had to call them back later
Because, too often, I feel lonely too
Because light needs the darkness too
Because it hadn’t to happen to someone
And I didn’t want it to be me
Because I was scared to say anything
Because it’s all too complicated
Because sometimes I feel helpless
Because music makes me want to dance
Because that’s far away and I’m safe
Because it’s easy
Because it’s easy
Because it’s easy

[after an increase in sexual disfigurement of indigenous women was reported in The Age newspaper]

I say no, don’t want that now, and he say, fine,
Then no one gonna have you.
Pours his stuff on me
He been huffin’, they all do,
Drops his durrie and I flame up
Like it’s a movie, ‘cept them fillums
Got no sense, no stink, no heat like this
Pain from navel to thigh
Searing as I claw wordless

When my mother tell me
A good woman got to have fire in her belly
Don’t think she never meant this.
I’s only 18. Now I’m like those women
In Africa got no feeling down there.
And I ain’t the only one.
Makes you scared to stand up
But we got to. We got to.