Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume Five November-December 2024
Almanac, poems by Gillian Swain.
Almanac
as if the boulders of this year hadn’t fallen
you still feel the way you did
the hum in your ears hasn’t stopped
as though the heart
could beat another shock away
as though skin will numb
a day is a planet
this whole year a churned universe
the bones of you still
hold up the sky
Late night delivery, shared prayer
The small hours have big arms.
Maybe we retreat
into the partitions of insomnia
to find that clasp.
After midnight solitude waits.
Conversations quiet metaphors
for early peace.
Trite they may well be
but honest too,
restorative
in the spaces of silence,
like the last
hours before daylight.
Grief
will wait
behind
every act of distraction
every spring clean
every rug rolled back and beaten.
It is loyal
robust
has a long bow.
Do what you will to get on with now
to be off with the past
claw back the present.
Construct delays with intricacy
use your best bricks and mortar
around your middle.
You will not hear it regain
its footing
return its grasp.
And be ready
you’ll find yourself look up
one day to learn
what deluge really looks like
a downpour for every day you
shut out pain
a sound so solid your throat remembers
swallowing it down
over and over and over.
Be ready
the size of time is immense
and heavy.
Grief inhabits
the moments left untended,
is patient.
All it wants
is welcome.
© Gillian Swain
Gillian Swain lives and writes on Wonnarua and Awabakal country in Australia. Gillian’s first full poetry collection is My Skin its own Sky (Flying Islands Press 2019) which followed her chapbook Sang Up (Picaro Press 2011). She is published in various anthologies and journals. Gillian has facilitated poetry workshops in many settings working with children and adults of all ages. She has appeared as a panellist and feature poet at writers festivals and events and was the poetry curator and co-director for the If Maitland Writers Festival through 2020-2022. Gillian currently is the convenor of Culture Club Poets Society in Maitland and one of the programmers at Newcastle Poetry at the Pub. Gillian’s most favourite things are her four children, her husband and Mum, their two dogs, poetry and coffee, not necessarily in that order.
Good stuff. Vividness dancing on the edge of abstraction.