James Walton
Palliative Care
I’ll sponge you with that moon
when the years shape my hands,
to close over the impossible
landscapes of everything we are.
The flecks of wattle gossamer
where my cheek rested,
as I listened to the Niagara rush
laughing through your belly
in those prehistoric days.
You dyed your hair jacaranda
then pomegranate, enough to confuse
the light plaiting between
the salvaged Beardsley glass panes.
Cellophane days in hidden crinkles
art nouveau flickering leaves,
tessellate our lives in Roman ways
of stones and glassy jewels.
Throw out the failing medicines
those prescriptions of what’s not,
let’s lay beneath the wax plant,
listen to the bees dream of honeycomb.
James Walton is the author of The Leviathan’s Apprentice (lulu.com, 2015). His work has appeared in Eureka Street, Plumwood Mountain, Hubgarden Poetry, Australian Love Poems – Anthology, The Wonder Book of Poetry, Bluepepper, Australian Poetry, A Sudden Presence – Poetry from the ACU Literature Prize – Anthology, Poetry d’Amour, Australian Poetry collaboration, Great Ocean Quarterly, Bukowski On Wry, Writing Raw, Five2One magazine, The Medical journal of Australia, Australian Latino Press, Verity La, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age newspaper. James lives in the Strzelecki Mountains in South Gippsland.
This poem appeared on hubgarden.