cecilia white

The painted kitchen window frame
lost its battle long ago
with the western sun.
Layers of colour,
deployed annually by the window’s wearied captain,
my neighbour,
have splintered like rebellious factions
fighting for their own true path,
unable to sustain unity
in the face of burning power.

Behind its resilient glass mask,
with an armour of tempered dust,
my neighbour’s wife, the sergeant,
inspects the narrow frontline
from across her sunburnt nose,
her own foolish legacy of heated combat.
Her eyes traverse the steel gauze wire
exploded by Kamikaze flies,
now all broken wrecks and shattered wings,
the upturned tanks that once were beetles
lie along the trenches between sill and frame.

The captain and the sergeant are not alone.
Black ants race through the cracks of despair
seizing booty and dragging the remnants of
each noonday battle
back to their camps across the trenches,
relaying messages to one another in agitated whispers
about the storm to the south.

They are the survivors of Summerwar.

© Celecilia White

Autumn Squall

This is not the weather for sailing.

As the last corner of sheet
looses its hold on the line
it is swept into the sea of swelling April air
and surrenders to the uncommon effort.
As if caught in a rip, the body of silk rises and falls
three times before disappearing.
It will be days before anything is found.

Socks, ankle length and sturdy
take the storm in their stride
riding each gust like practised surfers
giving themselves up to the physics of power.
Sometimes it is good to be small.

Bath towels belly flop their thickness into the fray
randomly slapping thin shivering cotton skirts
like any bully would, while shirts mutiny with a jerk
raising their arms against the attacks
trying to swing to safer shores
one cuff clinging to the wire horizon ahead
and calling the rest to follow.
Some do not make it.

Long legged jeans,
treading the watersquall of air for hours,
succumb as night falls and in quiet desperation
each leg tentacles around the other
looking for comfort and to hide the fear
as denim blue ink trickles down their long cut edges.

Autumn sits like Neptune in the heaving sea sky.
Backyards full of boats and sailors are buffeted
and rescues are in vain.
But morning will come,
they will sew the new sail.

Tonight is not the weather.

© Celecilia White

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