PAGE EMPTY
ALM No.90, June 2026
POETRY
Page Empty
The nothingness on this plain
page when universe percolates
with life/death, collision/birth
peacock platypus planets and
further freakish phenomena.
Page and its clones may appear
fresh and clean but exist only
to tempt destruction by mould,
cockroach, pen or fire. Silent
sulky emptiness: a mute scream,
asking for it, inviting desecration
of purity and nothingness.
Every atom a bomb then tomb
in waiting, every twinkly star
bright but finite. And I’m feeling
it deeply today out of excessive
blue of gloomy cloudless skyful
of empty. Tomorrow she goes
on holiday without me.
After All That
After half a century of ‘guidance’
from Jewish, Christian, Islamic texts
full of ageless wisdom, common sense,
nonsense, regulations, threats, hyperbolic-
silly claims and general gobbledygook,
luckily, I heard and listened intently
to a simple song, Aguas de Marco
(The Waters of March), by Brazilian
Juan Carlos Jobim and belatedly
but just in time realised how
to experience the world
and live a good life.
My Daughter is Middle-Aged
It dawned on me at a family dinner
where, sitting to my daughter’s right,
I peered at her face up close as she ate,
laughed, talked to her own daughter,
to me and all three of our current partners.
Quite mature daughter isn’t with the father
of her own daughter, just as I’m no longer
with her mother but I’m assured every-
one’s well-adjusted which we all realise
is a significant win. Anyway, that was
the very moment I realised my daughter
had crossed a border into the middle ages
since I last took a very close look at her.
It would be reasonable to expect an age
of enlightenment to eventually follow
but from personal experience I know
better than to count on that.
Allan Lake, originally from Canada, has lived all over Saskatchewan, Vancouver, Cape Breton Island, Spain, Sicily, Tasmania, Western Australia and Melbourne. His latest chapbook of poems, “My Photos of Sicily”, was published by Ginninderra Press. Such journals as The Hong Kong Review, The Fieldstone, Tokyo Poetry Journal, The Antigonish Review, New Philosopher and Fabians Review have published him.