Charlotte Clutterbuck lives in Canberra and writes essays and poetry. Her collection of poems, Soundings, was published by Five Islands Press in 1997. She won the Romanos the Melodist Prize for religious poetry in 2002 and the David Campbell Prize in 2009.
auxiliaries
There were causes:
we could have
we should have
we might have
we weren’t
we mustn’t have
and also:
I did and
I could be
I was but
I shouldn’t have been
not to mention:
he might have
he wouldn’t
he was but
he couldn’t
But these facts remain
I am not there
I am here
I will not be there when he hears
I live at the periphery of what used to be central
the Hume Highway is long
my back aches as much as my heart.
building
this first year
foundations – taking sights
laying out lines
ceremony of first sod
spadefuls of loam
barrowed away for turnips
pickaxe and crow
dislodging old coins
a smashed teapot
the builders’ dogs
faithful or busy, eyeing
each other, settling
rain setting in
overnight, trenches
full of muddy water
thud and shock
jackhammers
juddering rock
burnt and sweaty
shoulders heaving
rubble to surface
hands blistered
bruised and scratched
with limey soil
only in minds’ eyes
Satan flying west
on judgment door
mermaids on misericords
under baritone bums
sopranos shifting
spirits above
transcept into a spire
that’s yet to be
flat earth
I’ve stepped off the edge of my life
a contortionist’s tangled legs and arms
flailing, the music of the spheres rude
with shock, feathers drifting down
onto flattened vestiges of garden
I twist my neck to see
my crumpled limbs
through other people’s telescopes
unbalancing profit and loss
I knew but did not know the costs
could not preempt these doubts
peremptory love under spring boughs
bring me a cup of tea
kiss my cold shoulders and feet
tell me there’s no rabbit trap
pressing into my skull
let your voice and fingers
keep telling me of the wild place
somewhere in the mountains
where sparks from a twilit
bonfire fly above these jagged slopes