Thirteen

• Thirteen

Thirteen

Shadows at play on her rosethorn dress
Flecks in her brief fingernails
Thirteen hours and a one day left
Of white lines and fencing trails

And coming up the drive
She'll have that feeling of falling
From the old rooves of tin
Into the mattresses there waiting

Mother strides, her cropped straw hair,
Out to a tinder dry post
Thirteen years have made their scratch
She's wiping her hands on her clothes

And standing in the drive
She has that feeling of falling
Before the wild infant limbs
Made a clasp upon her breast

Shadows at play on the tyre-worn stretch
Of drive with its scorched eucalypts
Thirteen feet and a one arm's length

And there in the small of her chest
She has that feeling of falling
From the old rooves of tin
Into the mattresses there waiting

© Brendan Bonsack
July 2014

1. Levee
2. Thirteen
3. Aunt Tacita
4. Flannelette Princess
5. Newtown, Jackson and Main
6. Declaration
7. Call it Home
8. Age of Stone (part ii)
9. Something Borrowed, Something Found
10. No Edges

Once Was Water
Released July 2014