Poem: Sleeping Clare
This week’s Poet’s Corner features the third of three consecutive contributions from Patrick O’Donohue.
Sleeping Clare
off-duty ballet dancer
“the deep-time dance examining thoughts of coming-to-be”
Clare collapses into a brown blanket,
her hair skewwhiff upon a hot-wired throw,
her dodgy shoulder right-angled, banked, bent
to the blank, stalled drift of midnight’s slo-mo.
One arm gracefully arched is a memo
starched in time, from lithe limbs of ballet days
when the elegance of movement’s demo
traced the lines of lyric air’s weightless ways.
The act of dance crumples into older age,
as time and the Second Law’s dynamics
fold the stage of yesterday’s youthful page
into comfy chairs, slippers and lost tricks.
You might like
Memory and dreams now keep hold of past glories,
as at for the endings, Earth gathers all stories
Editor’s note. “Second Law’s dynamics”: The second law of thermodynamics.
Patrick O’Donohue was born in Brisbane and lives in Adelaide with his wife Clare. He is a member of Adelaide’s long-standing Friendly Street Poets Collective, and has been published in their Readers. Getting published is always a challenge, he thinks, “but I continue to try to make an imprint on Spacetime by growing tomatoes and writing poetry, and taking note of things in what is a difficult but infinitely interesting world”. Read Patrick’s previous Poet’s Corner contributions here.
Readers’ original and unpublished poems of up to 40 lines can be emailed, with postal address, to [email protected].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.