Poem of the week: ENDANGERED by Andrew M. Bell | Phantom Billstickers

Poem of the week: ENDANGERED by Andrew M. Bell | Phantom Billstickers

Tuesday Poem: "Spring Comes Early to the Fridge"

Ice arcs through the air
like solid lightning.

The large bolts strike with a rumble

and clatter to rest

where they gleam with bravado

at the dispirited winter sun.

The small bolts explode

with a skittering hiss

and trickle down between the bricks,

prodigal drops returning to the watertable.

Cast out from its plastic host,

the ice bears grooved testimony to their symbiosis,

but this testimony concedes to the crafting thaw

a bevel smoother than a human hand could fashion.

Some ice lies clustered on the brick paving

like terra incognita wrought on a vellum map

by the feverish imagination of an Olde World explorer.

Some lies scattered among the purple and white alyssum

in imitation of a Tyrolean spring.

As a breeze releases

the olfactory history of myriad fridge dwellers,

a cloth rings over a wire tray

in a crude arpeggio which segues into

the basso profundo of the resurrection hum.

The cycle begins anew.

The poet wishes to acknowledge The Western Review (Western Australia) in whose pages this poem first appeared.

Tuesday Poem: "The Crucible"

Father, you are the blueprint of my soul,
And though I sense our parting drawing near,

The crucible of death will make us whole.

The day or hour is not ours to control

Yet even strangers read your passing here.

Father, you are the blueprint of my soul.

In paradise's fields I see a knoll

Where, shucked of flesh, we sport without a care,

The crucible of death will make us whole.

As age and weight make diamond from the coal,

So I am fashioned from your smile and tear,

Father, you are the blueprint of my soul.

I will not dread the shedding of my role,

A promise waits beyond the footlights' glare,

The crucible of death will make us whole.

So, father, do not fear to pay the toll,

I am the sun, your shadow I revere.

Father, you are the blueprint of my soul.

The crucible of death will make us whole.


The poet wishes to acknowledge the Naked Eye anthology (Western Australia) in whose pages this poem first appeared.

Tuesday Poem: "Lake Toba, 28 June 1993"

LAKE TOBA, 28 June 1993

The lake is smoothed jade after the rain

and only the commercial flotsam

of a lonely plastic Aqua bottle is adrift

on untrammelled waters.

A butterfly of the kind we usually see pinned and dead

drifts by

like me, enjoying the return of the sun,

“mata hari”, the eye of the sky

shining fiercely like Hanuman

from a leaden countenance.

Boys fool by my verandah view offering

to sell me a girl.

The travellers pass through like capsules,

pausing only to bleed money into outstretched palms.