Ruth Pink
Jack
Leave unadorned by needless art
The picture as it came.*
follow the steps
of descent there often
the dance of DNA
is as indecipherable
as a map of treasure where the
ink has all but bleached away
stories of all the family’s
women now create him
tea and sepia stained the father
lavishing lumps of sweet peel on toast
50 miles inland at 5am
reading Robert Louis Stevenson
by candlelight shivering lambs
at his feet wrapped in blankets
snow outside crushing tussock
(the pump handle would freeze
a tongue right to it)
gone before the children woke
but part of the Masonic Order
where the press of fingers left a
longer imprint
a legacy for men
on nights of the school play,
piano recitals and travelling speakers
the cows got out and he disappeared
with them into purple foothills
a gang of sharp eyed collies slinking
into the shadows behind him
in summer the hot bake of sun
on standing hay
raking soil for warm potatoes
measured out scrupulously into sugar sacks
at night again silent and dreaming
a solemnness that is not sleep but distance
(how tirelessly the hawk circles the paddocks)
even in that small kitchen
looking for you there
the traces tell you
inhabited another place
* Robert Louis Stevenson, from “To the Muse”
Page(s) 29
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