Kate McNamara – Drought

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Live Encounters Poetry & Writing June 2025

Drought, poems by Kate McNamara.

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Drought

All omens shall be stayed
until the rains come
the thick softness of wet leaves.

I work in the glass house
in the universe of plants
pulling weary vegetables
from the clumping soil.
We are all a subject of the sun.

In the seasons turning around me
I learn cold is the greater teacher
ice and the stars of winter the killing
frosts the naked trees that shine
butterflies slaters worms bees
the blood and the bone and the seaweed
old hands that sew the seed.

I would be warm again by fires and the Equinox
dancing the Harvest Queen a spiral

waiting for water beyond me the God
of thunder clouds nameless and indifferent
so pitiless in the sky-kingdom near the sun.

And we knowing like animals
like prey like thorny husks perennial
that to move is certain death
to stay in gravid constancy
is the certainty of life.

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The City of Desire

Memory alone preserves the journey
I travel out of stone mountains
where the wind dances like a cantata
whirling in the hollows of night
my empty heart thuds far from
the winter city and warm rooms
curled asleep like cats
dreamless until the light breaks
into a morning of shattered glass
and broken crockery the remnants
of rage and lust and drunk
with a bad desire the city
was my last defense a succession
of walls fantasies measured silences
that encased my exiled heart
til I could neither speak nor hear
now there is no place to hide
like a season of death
I move for movement’s sake
over these grim broken plains.

Summer hounds me like
a blind snake sloughing skin
and furious our love grew
wild panting hungry uneasy
that old city still calls for me
I yearn for it the green gable attic
the daisies that glow beside Lethe
water dark water near burning hell
where Orpheus still mourns for his lost love
O Orpheus you were such a fucking fool.

I t was lethal to me that love
it flew into my heart like
the feathers of a bright bird
and I forgot the city and its cold masters
that sit by the glass lake I forgot
them all as the water filled with
light luminescence shone
over you I could not see
you monster of caprice.
I was young and laughing
at it all we had hunted
for the magic of the witch Goddess
one too often the city had
its way with us like lace blossoms
which always falls in
the late heat of summer
and the curse it came upon me
like the Lady of Shalott.

How I waited in the room
we made in autumn where the window
faced the Sunne and red blue leaves
veins like spider’s legs the wind
blowing through me and the curtains
red velvet dusty a bordello we said.

My heart beating a rag doll
a clock a worn-out cliché
waiting Eurydice again
watching you your freedom
as you fled down the street.

The caged birds would no longer
eat tearing their
own feathers and mine
you brought them for me you said
I thought of Da Vinci
buying pigeons in the Palazzo
each morning to set them free
to see the miracle of flight.

I could not see how the room
was bare aching the spring
summer gone the smell
of bad wine days tottering
into night and you
you went back into the labyrinth
of back lanes a panther doing
drugs selling guns out of Somalia
the city took you back again.

Grey came into my eyes fading
I stroked the dying birds
they would no longer drink
I cut their throats
beaks raking the floor
threshing in their own blood
I had no tears for you for anyone.

It was a necessary sacrifice in the
temple of our love the air
cooled against the windows
rattling like claws
and the city waited for me
and I fled the city I was dying from it
and you were dead.

Now I am the last
listener in the darkness
pursued by phantoms mythical children
and the birds they haunt me
still hunting my heart
I killed their kin
I murdered them
for love for love

Memory is hazardous
Mapless the moon like a tiger’s eye
when sleep comes so do you
I see you in that perfect room
holding the slim golden feathers
tenderly as if you could bring them
back defeat death’s dark thresh-hold
only for you a monster

Who do you think you are: a God Morpheus?

So I set your city afire a bonfire at mid -day
flames crackle invisibly outside
our room and you can no longer move.

Winter comes for me daily
I hide from it as the city
burns within me
I could not see myself there
I was so gone from you now
the birds have pecked out my eyes
like Oedipus’ wretched wife.

I know the night must end
it always does in fairy tales
light coming like an oyster shell
glistening it will come for me
with the first suggestion
of a lapwing’s flight.

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The Eagle

But for the vernacular of thought
I would take the wind
as the Eagle
fly alone above the long sea
where it curls like a glass cage.
Fish and the memory of the Antipodes
all creatures turning to the spinner of light
of light and dark.

The Eagle and I describing an arc
language in the hollow of bones
and shamans we would make speech
making an escape like myths
without words to ensnare us.

Calling up the wind to catch us
in order to shape breath the moon bird
turning and burning in flight beating the air
I would hold the darkness
of a predator in my throat.

Charting our path over the sands
shifting in time in stars
high above the sea we would ride
mapping a path to a place
of peril in our hearts
joyful and screeching.

I would take that journey.

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© Kate McNamara

Kate McNamara is a poet, playwright and critical theorist. She also works as an editor. Her plays have been performed inter-nationally and she was invited to deliver the opening address to the 4th International Conference of Women Playwrights in Galway. She has recently returned to her first love: poetry. Her works have been published in a range of formats. A founding member of the Canberra Surrealist movement, Aktion Surreal, she lives in Ainslie with her sons, cats and a menagerie of wild birds.