REUNION

In Time

From dark fathoms I watched them move

Through the cold, it all seemed so easy,

Moving like sharks

No time to wonder who they are.

So simple it seemed

Through their eyes I tried to see

In their mind I tried to be.

Just for one moment,

their actions I tried to mime,

Thought I’d found their ease –

but couldn’t keep in time.

Reunion

I haven’t seen her for ten years or more…

Has she thought about me at all?

It is dark as I leave home,

People hide who they are

Everywhere, all the time,

Lost moons looking for orbit.

All that is pushed away

Is pulled back through spaces between,

I’ll meet them there,

I can’t be late.

I haven’t seen her for ten years or more…

It was dark on the way home, the same as before.

I think of how she said,

I hadn’t changed at all.

How I lied,

Had to meet a friend,

And said I was busy all the time.

It is the shortest day of the year,

And she hadn’t thought about me at all.

October Garden

Spring is a disappointment.

Magpies and mynas skirmish in the treetops,

For all around life is still happening,

Stronger than I.

I could have slept until dusk.

Though, at this time of year,

The days are getting longer

Games go on,

I am too tired to play,

As everything grows,

And the weak fall away.

The Shops

Purpose lost and found in mundane places

Between aisles and cashiers

Profane answers to sacred questions

Walk with the old

From houses too large to manage alone

Living for the next visitor, the next call

I am too young to feel so worn

Small talk transactions worth nothing

In aching suburban silence

Hollowed rituals are all surviving is

Where We Stand

The man led us from the north hill to the embankment

Gesturing to the river,

He told us how his people had died for it

In some skirmish centuries past.

Scenes replayed in me -

Of bloody men

Crying out in foreign sounds,

Then sprawled out in the muck,

Fertilising the shrubs along a red river.

Now there is just a lone sign

Pointing to the nearest town,

I wonder how long it’s been there?

The trees here are beautiful

And the river flows calm and clear -

The only sound you can hear.

Nick Sinclair: I am a primary school teacher in Melbourne Australia and have begun writing poetry in the last few years. I have always had a passion for literature and have found poetry a cathartic means of expression. My work primarily focuses on social isolation, the search for meaning, human consciousness and the fractured nature of identity. I try and explore these through the interplay of expansive landscapes and big ideas with quiet, everyday experience.