Before the news
there is the garden where baby sweet peas
stretch tall in the warm soil, and rows
of broad beans stand obediently upright
in a bed of autumn leaves. New season nerines
face north with crimped white hair-dos, geraniums
in blue pots smile a lip-stick red, and the purple and white
salvia gushes ecstatic after plenty of rain.
Before the news there is
the neighbourhood valley, its arms open, its green coat
adorned with splashes of orange and yellow.
Before the news there is the clear blue sky
calling her up,
calling her up the hillside
to walk amongst the trees.
These words follow the trail of poets and painters
before her. To Autumn was her favourite Keats poem
at school. Kathy Newton, a classmate,
painted her response to it,
rich and delicate. But nature’s poetry will always
have the first and last wordless word.
Is there not some kind of necessity
that in its presence we be lost for words?
On the hill closer to the sky, she walks beneath the trees.
The answers can be found there … before the news
and after it. She looks down on the slower pace of things,
the river quiet, the city streets emptied out,
all that striving and purpose subdued.
There was talk of this possibility, imagined by those
who saw it coming before the news and after it.
This reserve of trees used to be a village
known as woodcutters hill, its stone remnants recall
a life returned to dust. The constant desire
to make, to do – the same word in Spanish: hacer –
continues. She can hear it in the language of bees
working through the daisy bushes,
it’s a welcome sign they still come to her garden.
She can hear it in the builders bang,
the beep of machinery digging and re-shaping.
This urge to move, to not sit quiet because
the end will take us beyond everything we know.
The need to stretch and climb, to walk, to run, to leap,
to dance. The intensity of settling words onto paper
as a poem agitates from some deep chaos
to break the surface; or the first splash
of paint on canvas – like an itch desperate for a scratch.
What to make of it? Bursting to move,
dying to be still. Dying … still – from the moment we are born.
These words feel like her secret. Only the trees, the ravens,
the breeze and the steadfast mountain looking on
know about them. Neruda counted to twelve:
if we were not so single-minded about moving* … he wrote.
She sits on a rock, closes her eyes, counts to fifteen
in sets of five. Breathes in, then out.
When asked for seven words about the crisis she wrote:
Humans listen
to what nature
is saying …
* Quote from the poem Keeping Quiet by Pablo Neruda, written in the 1950s, now available on the internet.
Anne Collins writes poetry and creative non-fiction. She has published five books, her most recent being a poetry collection titled: How to Belong (Ginninderra Press, 2019). Further information about Anne and her work can be found on her website at annecollins.com.au.