Bruce Dawe

“Hearing the sound of your breathing as you sleep,
with the dog at your feet, his head resting
on a shoe, and the clock's ticking
like water dripping in a sink
-- I know that, even if reincarnation were a fact,
given the inherent cruelty of the world
where beautiful things and people
are blasted apart all the day long,
I would never want to come back, knowing
I could never be this lucky twice...”
― Bruce Dawe

“One day soon he’ll tell her it’s time to start
packing,
And the kids will yell “Truly?” and get wildly
excited for no reason,
And the brown kelpie pup will start dashing about,
tripping everyone up,
And she’ll go out to the vegetable-patch and pick
all the green tomatoes from the vines,
And notice how the oldest girl is close to tears 5
because she was happy here,
And how the youngest girl is beaming because she
wasn’t.
And the first thing she’ll put on the trailer will be
the bottling set she never unpacked from
Grovedale,
And when the loaded ute bumps down the drive
past the blackberry-canes with their last
shrivelled fruit,
She won’t even ask why they’re leaving this time,
or where they’re heading for
—she’ll only remember how, when they came 10
here,
she held out her hands bright with berries,
the first of the season, and said:
’Make a wish, Tom, make a wish.”
― Bruce Dawe