Live Encounters Poetry & Writing 16th Anniversary Volume Seven
November- December 2025
A Rain Memoir, poems by Patricia Sykes.
A Rain Memoir
1
The rain on my concrete patio
shades from charcoal
to pale grey
mirrored by clouds
the tinted biography
of a minute
2
The rain so light it sprinkles
the nasturtium leaves
with water crystals
their green shimmer
a celebration
of dawn’s lushness
3
Eastern spinebills flit
from flower to flower
their littleness a bonus
as their curved beaks
feast on the garden’s
blissed nectar
A Heart’s Dividends
As little more than a sizzle
on the hotplates of history
my heart’s morphology
atop its chassis of bones
at once a shackled star
and a sanctum of joy,
grief, as it sings
its own redemption
despite its litany
of secrets
it relishes the brain’s
wild fruit
expelling toxins
from its lungs
as it swims off
in witness
© Patricia Sykes
Patricia Sykes is a poet and librettist. Her poems and collections have received various awards, including the Newcastle Poetry Prize, John Shaw Neilson award and the Tom Howard Poetry Prize. She has read her work widely and it has featured on ABC radio programs Poetica and The Spirit of Things. Her collaborations with composer Liza Lim have been performed in Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney, Paris, Germany, Russia, New York and the UK. She was Asialink Writer in Residence, Malaysia, 2006. A selection of her poems was published in an English/Chinese edition by Flying Island Books in 2017. A song cycle composed by Andrew Aronowicz, based on her collection The Abbotsford Mysteries, premiered at The Abbotsford Convent Melbourne — now an arts precinct — in 2019. A podcast of this work is available on various platforms.