Poems by Cameron Lowe

Considering Ern Malley’s The Darkening Ecliptic
on a fine spring morning in the front garden
 
it’s not so much the caterpillar
 
itself —
 
but the shape
 
of the hole
 
it has left
 
in the heart
 
of the leaf

Patience
 
Clouds fracture —

            the weight of sparrows
                         splinters
                                      glass delusions —
 
green verge
            of painted days —
 
                         compress this
                                        out of silence
 
            §
 
            winter’s edge —
 
the eye traces
            flight
                        toward definition —
 
            blue jeans
                         crimson leaves
                                      wing shapes
            cutting
                         sharp light
 
            §
 
            come
                         the day beckons —
 
            patience flowers
                         in cool bowls
            a surface
                         to commence with —
 
                         there is much
                                      to be done —
 
                         all that’s
            at the tip
                         of naked branches

Borders
 
The crisp sunlight, the pale
blue sky, are only part
of the subject —
 
better this Autumn
afternoon the orange
butterfly with
 
black-edged wings,
who by chance
enters the garden
 
that is no space
to him (or
her) at all,
 
who goes on through
the white pickets,
through the rust-
 
coloured grapevine —
of this poem