Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume Five November-December 2024
A Spider, poems by Jennifer Compton.
A Spider
A redback spider slipped through my hands and onto the ground
as I took off the lid to the compost bin
— how beautiful they were!
The glossy glossy black, the vermilion, carmine, scarlet, crimson
of the marking on their back.
The word ‘red’ comes nowhere near.
I say ‘were’ because I crushed them quickly as I could under my heel.
Was I wrong?
Saving Seed
Next year you will be hungry,
I can guarantee.
Eye off the climbing bean pod,
dangling, yellowing,
the one that got away
from this year’s picking.
Inside — count them with your fingers —
five chances.
Wait a bit. Wait a bit. Soon they will be wrapped
in a twist of brown paper.
Now! Put the five unquickened pulses
into a dry, dark drawer.
Next year you will be glad of them.
Believe me.
Grown From Seed I Saved Last Year
My runner beans are seeking structure.
One upstart tendril has found the downpipe
and is circling it.
I tormented another hopeful this afternoon
as it was groping with one soft finger
out into mid-air.
I held my hand up next to it loudly promising
that I would stand there for two days.
No I won’t.
Tomorrow it will be too hot to grip the metal pipe
so the tender feeler will think again
and back off.
© Jennifer Compton
Jennifer Compton lives in Melbourne. Recent Work in Canberra published her 11th book of poetry, the moment, taken, in 2021. She is an avid performer, bringing page to the stage, and won the Melbourne Poets Union Open Mic Prize in 2017 and was highly commended for the Melbourne Spoken Word Prize in 2017 and 2018. She has recently been a guest at the Newcastle Writers Festival, the Queensland Poetry Festival, the Red Dirt Poetry Festival, and the Maitland Writers Festival. She also writes reviews, most recently for Cordite Literary Review and Mascara Literary Review.