Poetry

Six poems

The wishing stone

As a child I would put

pebbles in my mouth

to better know their shape.

Around the stone, unusually smooth

I’d feel the spit inside my cheeks

and think of how an oyster works

at a single piece of grit.

I remember once reading

that sucking at a pebble

could stave off thirst.

I doubted this and always felt a shiver

when it touched against my teeth.

Stone fruit

By October

the neighbour’s peaches

have grown out through their netting

like fish escaping

into the street.

Past Tarago, NSW (passenger seat)

A cow walking in grass

high as a cow

maybe two dozen

their brown backs slicing

just above the blades.

At the road’s edge

mowed wide and rough

the plants are in seed,

almost silver.

The wire hanger

In my kitchen, editing

a poem and ironing a shirt

which I realise now

is the same thing.

Fitting the shirt

to the thin shoulders

of a wire hanger

and realising I am jealous

of its striped chest, empty

of all but meaning.

The ocean’s sound

For Kris Kneen

The ocean’s final sound

is of a quilt being shaken

the slap of fabric against dull fabric

a brace of tattlers on the sand

chattering at this work.

The bluebell

In the back of the book

I place a blue flower

on its way like memory

to becoming paper.

In the pages she writes

it didn’t hurt, not much:

it’s rare for someone

to read you so closely.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on September 27, 2025 as "Six poems".

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