Three o'clock in the torpid hours and a mug of chamomile tea-
the honey leatherwood-sweet as the barely-there desire
of a leathered dream bandit.
Past three am, and in front of the fire,
piss-yellow tea drained from the pot
(the wild daisies left behind in the strainer,
juicy, mop-headed sleep berries),
the roof dripping with an acrid creosote cold,
winter-matted dog brought inside.
A rat on the top shelf hangs its tail, a tiny thong;
you hear them in the night,
dropping and thwacking their pemmican tails.

Stringbark in the fire-box burns ferocious,
loyal as a stinking dog,
its orange teeth gnawing away the white bones
of this winter night;
the heat through glass melting grey gristle.

Once upon a time, a long time ago,
but not long enough,
a man waited in a bed by a window
with a bad leak and a murderous, brimstone draught;
waited in the small sulphurous hours
for signs of life from his paralysed wife.

Back then,
a sojourn by the fire was a curved and ragged blade
pressed into an already-scarred throat;
a small pot of chamomile tea
was the shaman's terrible decoction.
How he hated her to flaunt her self.
It was the poison-dipped razor that slit undone
the purple welts of his veins.

A piquant fire,
the rose-water scent of greenish tea
and a moment in the small hours of living the wormwood,
the quinine, the quassia bitterness
of a middle-aged bride.

Sleep, oh sleep.
Steal me, perfect lover...
You curl yourself around, a perfect fit.
There are no word-sounds burbling, babbling from your mouth-
merely the quiet breath of dreams swept up off the plains.
Do you ever watch me with a scavenger's salt-stained eye?
Your gaze is gentle, I know.
You barely guess me, loving best in the dark,
where all we know is
your chaste touch on the violet flickering of eyelids,
your dry-sand brushings on corrugated lips.

I wake in daylight and lean into brine-smutted pillows.
Blue winter plumes of blackwood smoke
cascade outside the high windows-
they could be wisps of morning cloud surrounding
this piney house that is so much like a mourning-boat
that has dragged its mooring.

How else did I come to live so far away?
Perhaps it was the unshod footfall of the wild horses,
or the whistling voices of the wild horsemen?
the strings of their strange three-note music
fading like apple-smoke when the winds change.
My husband has left me to carry
the smutched parcel of my life alone.

Winter leaves on the dancing fingertips of cherry trees
are little dried mango-skin flags;
and those frost-bleached trees are my mother's
old clothes baskets,
unsprung from their bindings.
The house on the opposite slope could be
in another country of sad green-swards and long shadows.
Why is it that our neighbour seems so far away?

Peking geese honk a hoarse calligraphy under the house.
They walk like widows to the frankincense stall,
all their grace in their fat behinds.
I could be anywhere, could be anyone.
What more could I hope for?

An autumn fire to keep me;
a cherry tree to fill this anise afternoon
with yellow leaves,
and yes!
an oxygen-blue wren, bright as a piece
of river-softened china
flipped over to show the blurred pattern of slow oxen.