Josephine Collett Poems

Woman

Walking
in the searing sunlight
...

Magpie, mudlark, currawong
Wake her with their garrulous warbling song
As sunlight through the branches illuminates the dawn,
They boldly sing their joyful praise to greet another morn.
...

There is something happening to
the apple tree
The wintered grey branches
are changed beneath my fingers,
...

Will you come to me, unbidden
through the vast unreached chasms of my mind
when the world has forsaken and forgotten
all that I aspired to, a world rejecting and unkind
...

This is where you will come to meet with Me.
I am everywhere, but if you come
I will be waiting to meet you here.
...

I saw the tear
before he turned away
and bade goodbye
And gave it not a thought
...

So many ways
Within the dandelion-blown passages of time
Of not knowing
...

All my life I have known
The shape of a track through sand and rock and stone
to the edge of pools where dark shadows
fill the water's face with reflected sky and willows
...

Why do you fly, lone traveller,
winging the surface of the dark water
When all have left and flown
to nest and home?
...

This is my physical body, recovering
From the onslaught of the enemy
This body that You, O Lord my Creator,
Formed in my mother's womb.
...