A Beetle and a Flower

(For my mother)

Yesterday,
a beetle crossed my road —
lapis lazuli and red on black.

I watched it crawl,
so slow that twenty years crashed
as tyres crunched the asphalt all around
and sunlight draped the paddock
where you cup your pride —
an orchid, tender-stemmed,
with red veins running to pools of blue —
in hands cracked by years
scrubbing old men’s pans,
wiping lips purpled by death’s advance.

It made it to the other side, the beetle,
and, in the shadow of a leaf,
became a dark thing
burrowing into days of greying hair
and dimming eyes,
and the trembling hearts of flowers
fenced round from grazing sheep.


Peter Burges (Western Australia)

Our Tree

     (For my brother Michael and my sister Margaret)

Our tree, lissom, muscular,
Stood forever tall against wind and rain,
Shading against intrusive suns.

Only the time-blind Moonbone
Sees the ants gnawing its guts,
Its fall, long as shame.

Naked in the dust of passers-by,
It and the sheep it killed
Grow grey together

Until Half-Eye’s quickening
Transforms worm etchings
Into airy silver chimes.


Peter Burges (Western Australia)