Live Encounters Poetry & Writing August 2021
Dr Beatriz Copello is a well-known reviewer, writer and poet, she is also known for her sense humour. “Her poems are sensuous, evocative and imaginative. Beatriz Copello is one of Australia’s foremost poets,” wrote Julia Hancock, Ex-Editor of Allan an Unwin and Freelance editor and journalist. Copello’s poetry books are Women Souls and Shadows, Meditations at the Edge of a Dream, Flowering Roots, Under the Gums Long Shade, and Lo Irrevocable del Halcon (In Spanish). Her poetry has been published in literary journals such as Southerly and Australian Women’s Book Review and in many other print and Electronic Publications. Fiction books by author are: A Call to the Stars, Forbidden Steps Under the Wisteria and Beyond the Moons of August (Her Doctoral Thesis).
Conundrum
I could not say when this started
neither could I say when this will finish,
it is a sort of a long, long road
with no beginning and no end.
It has been like being a seed
before being a flower and
sometimes like being a flower
before being a seed, perhaps
being the last page of a book
and at the same time the front cover.
I was old when I was born
and I was a child when I visited hell
Maybe all commenced after I had dinner
with the Gods and Thor was present,
he named me Rose, a rose with a few petals
it was then summer but without the sun
or beaches or streets or buses full of people.
It was then that I …
The Carpenter
Yesterday
In a bronze chest
my wood and nails
were hidden and protected.
As fast as possible I left
in search of my hammer,
the one with the silver handle
and the titanium head.
But before leaving
I blew the accumulated dust
and wrote your name on it.
Today
Please return to read me
your poems carved on rocks.
Perhaps you also are there
hidden in the coffer.
No, you are in search
of my troubled spirit,
but you won’t find it
because she wonders
alone in the desert.
Tomorrow
Drink my blood
search in the small lake
made with my tears
my mouth is full of sand,
press yours lips against mine
give me a nail because
I have found my hammer.
Free air at the service station
Life hangs like an overripe fig
suspended on the end of a branch.
Tremble the children of The Books
submitted to a perilous life or is it
a test or perhaps a punishment
they suffer …
have they eaten another fruit?
Faces covered, over washed hands
a jab and a rest may bring forgiveness
to the sinners who transgress.
Plaster statues give hope to some
they pray, they kneel, they beg
because they cannot breathe.
“My horse for a cylinder of air …”
Malfunction
The faulty china dolls,
baked from dust and a spark of sapient
reign in a decaying world.
A brook sings a monotonous song
obscure chanting of pebbles rattling and
at the bottom-fool’s gold waiting.
A trail of dreams all the way to heaven
a maiden weaves with nylon threads
a giant net to catch an eagle.
Soldiers march blindfolded and mute
to defend a dead future.
The streets are deserted, at the dinner table
families sit to a meal of images
imprisoned in a wooden box.
Humans play chess with nature
ticks bursting with blood,
fungus growing with lust.
Earthly concern: trips to the moon
a radar points to the stars,
joined by a synthetic cord
while the mind of all minds
cries at the failures
of the china dolls.
A life together
We met in winter
and holding hands
we shared a reality
interwoven dreams
which were like leaves
that dance in autumn.
As petals of a red Bromeliad
we opened the door
to our minds and hearts
and we learnt that sombre grey
is made of black and white.
But like Uluru we remained
firm, our feet grounded
our souls ethereal.
Today fighting decay
we raise our glasses
to our eternal future.
© Beatriz Copello