A quartet of short poems
Jake Dennis shares four short poems spanning nature and nostalgia in his third week of Poet’s Corner contributions.
Lover
Stay, when birds insist their young return.
When foxes roam the woods, remain beside me.
The sun follows you. I fear your turn—
the removal of warmth—into the sea of memory.
Photograph in the Peppermint Grove
Municipal Heritage Inventory 1999
A girl in a white dress holding her parasol
looks at us through time’s cold telescope
while wind pours into the half lungs of sails,
swinging boats, trailing grey waters.
Behind her, a man in black coat strolls forward
through infinite years beneath an unaltered Eucalypt.
Drift Glass
Someone topaz-eyed stops, stares
at the emptied wharf,
recalls the blood stink of bait
and the far-off youth—
brandy-haired and scruffy, fishing
the briny mirror, brown feet dangling
bare and cool—
who fell.
Pacific Black Duck
Anas superciliosa
Her shaking thoughts beneath the pond this dawn
kick to hold her peace in place, a tent in storm.
She checks, between each swelling, spreading pulse,
the drinking lawn afresh.
Her beak throughout each beat
into her steady plumage rests.
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Jake Dennis lives in Perth. Of Burmese-Australian heritage, he is a singer, actor and published poet. He was the 2009 Editor of Grok Magazine, and has worked as a freelance journalist for Drum Perth, Science Network WA and MeDeFacts. He previously worked at The University of Western Australia, Anglicare WA, and as a volunteer with the Royal Agricultural Society of WA and WA Poets Inc. One of his poems today was part of a suite titled ‘The Living Suburbs’ which won the Now & Then Literature Prize 2011. Details of Jake’s poetry publishing and entertainment career, can be found along with his previous two week’s Poet’s Corner contributions, and he is on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter (X), and at www.poetofjazz.com.
Readers’ original and unpublished poems of up to 40 lines can be emailed, with postal address, to [email protected]. Submissions should be in the body of the email, not as attachments. A poetry book will be awarded to each accepted contributor.