For more than fifty years

I have lived in Hobart

surrounded by the beauty of

historic cottages

eucalyptus-scented forests

white crests on angry waves

black swans, kookaburras

and soaring eagles.
 

And yet  

the absences of my life here

are merely death’s debutantes

which tease and fiddle and dance

with the dawns of my possibilities.

Sometimes, I play with tarot cards and runes

willing them to help me change my future

but hours, transformed into stone

by the masons of time,

are powerless to re-sculpt

the granite statue of my destiny.

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Christiane Conesa-Bostock was born in Lyon, France, and came to Australia in the early 1970s. She taught French, English and Spanish at Rosny College. She has written short stories and poems that have been published in Australia, Algeria, France and the US. Her latest publication is a bilingual book of poems about the painter Monet (Kol Sason Press).