Friday, April 2, 2021

Andrew Burke : Three poems

 

 

 

SUBURBAN FROG

I stopped to stand
on a stone bridge
in the wetlands

I stopped to listen to
a frog’s monologue    donk  donk

but as I stopped he stopped –
all I heard was a handyman

thumping and sawing
to my left and to my right

space invaders in a backyard.
I stood and waited to

catch my breath and as I
waited frog started again    donk

closer seemingly      donk donk
under the bridge – and his throaty song

lightened my load    donk donk
and I smiled as I looked up

to the top of the tallest gum    donk

  

 

SUMMER BAKE

while the cake bakes
as I listen to criss-cross by
the dancing monk of jazz

a magpie lark came to my windowsill

ah even the white snails
stop eating the cactus and
the caterpillars walk in

cross rhythms with the ants
as the golden sun ball bounced off

the empty letter box.

I halved the sugar load coz
the bananas were so ripe.
while the cake bakes

I listen to a BBC piano played
with an african-american accent

and dance on my keys.


 

IN EARLY AUTUMN NIGHT
for David Brooks

I lie here
reading Ponge’s Things
when I smell the woody smoke

from your writing shed’s potbelly
way over in the Blue Mountains

and hear the multilingual words
of your weatherboard shelves compete

with the hurrying scurrying feet
of possums in your roof at night.
 

It’s my experience of
the Fire Sermon, the lasting text
in the mountain air, time

so tricked to be in
two places at once.

 

 

Andrew Burke (MA, PhD) is an Australian poet, with numerous books to his credit, the latest of which is New & Selected Poems (Hobart: Walleah Press, 2020).