ACTS OF SURVIVAL
Peepal Tree PressSeptember 2020Selected by Jeremy Poynting
In the Name of Our Families is the fourth in a remarkable series of joint collections of daily poems sent between two major writers: Ghanaian-Jamaican and now Nebraskan poet, Kwame Dawes, and Western Australian poet, John Kinsella. They challenge each other to write in specific poetic forms and write like visionary prophets about the state of the Trumpian USA and an Australia struggling to come to terms with its settler colonialist past and the continuing consequences of racism and environmental destruction. They reflect on family, on ecology, on art and politics. Sometimes they just report on what is happening: a bird seen and news of a sister’s terminal illness. — Jeremy Poynting
41.
The silvereyes’ nest in the geraniums outside Tim’s bedroom
window has been abandoned with only a single egg laid – that
happened
while we were away, and the nest has shifted so its mouth faces
more to the south, the egg searching for a familial cloud to take
in,
but growing colder, even though the days are warming. We put so
much emphasis on these nests that aren’t ours, and that we step
gingerly around – cautious not to disturb the routine, the making,
the laying, the hatching, the rearing, the failures. As if portals
to “nature” at its very essence – or topos – we systemise into an
understanding of the world that leans too heavily on metaphor
as acts of survival. And much burden of proof placed on nests of
songbirds, of the moment woven from thin strands of grass,
leaves,
bound together with moss, with their persuasive arguments of
continuance in the face of intrusions and upsets, the separateness
of the sun. Routines are fallen back into, remade as the firebreaks,
some of which this year I will do slowly by hand to show what
can be done.
Our routines have shifted and shifted again – back now to Jam
Tree Gully and the long drive to take Tim to the bus, to collect
him.
JK
42.
You must know, dear sister, that I will wash your feet
daily on my knees, hold your feet and let the oils seep through;
you must know that I want to be the servant at your beck
and call, the one to give you soft sips of water when you thirst;
you must know, dear sister, that today I am lost with fear;
there is no language to speak of absence and I cannot cry
except in the way that fears appear unbeckoned.
You must know, sister, that I am just waiting for the space
between morbid hopelessness, and spunky energy
for living in the moment, to cover you, so I can give
you the gift that will be a gift to me, the trip we will take
to Ghana, to that first land of ours, to the sea’s edge,
where, against all the rules of the doctors, we will share
a bowl of peppery stewed corned-beef, and gooey
skinned yellow yams boiled on a wood-stove,
and like children capable of imagining legends
in every indulgence, we will recall what bound us first –
how we ate and ate and ate, and ate, and how, for years after,
we spoke of this miracle of gluttony and solidarity.
You must know that what I fear most is the loss of shelter,
you who have known all my sins, and who have loved me
despite them, and this is as bluntly as I can put it,
for in the end love, like this, is unremarkable,
and yet everything. You have said it to me already,
my reprimand. “I will not roll over,” you say,
and I feel like a snivelling betrayer of all faith
to lament at the news of a mere stumbling.
You will say, as you have, that you walk with hope.
Still, this morning, I woke with a shadow over me,
and the wrenching of the walk you and I took
from the bus stop, along Red Hills Road, up Salford Avenue,
then right onto Carlisle, and you turning to me and saying,
“How was it?” and me saying, “I gave my life.”
You, with nonchalance, simply smiled and said, “Good.”
I would learn what rejoicing speared your heart that dark night
on the way to 4 Carlisle Avenue, brother and sister.
Sister, you must know that I fear praying for you
because I fear the silence that will settle on my love
of God if you leave. I fear apostasy. I would rather not ask.
KD ◉
Kinsella leaves a self-referential trace in the last lines of his poem: as well as describing features of the Australian landscape, Firebreaks and Jam Tree Gully are the titles of two of his poetry collections.
Red Hills Road, Salford Avenue and Carlisle Avenue are roads in Kingston, Jamaica, where Dawes grew up.