Josephine Collett

Woman

Walking
in the searing sunlight
...

Magpie, mudlark, currawong
Wake her with their garrulous warbling song
As sunlight through the branches illuminates the dawn,
They boldly sing their joyful praise to greet another morn.
...

There is something happening to
the apple tree
The wintered grey branches
are changed beneath my fingers,
...

Will you come to me, unbidden
through the vast unreached chasms of my mind
when the world has forsaken and forgotten
all that I aspired to, a world rejecting and unkind
...

This is where you will come to meet with Me.
I am everywhere, but if you come
I will be waiting to meet you here.
...

I saw the tear
before he turned away
and bade goodbye
And gave it not a thought
...

So many ways
Within the dandelion-blown passages of time
Of not knowing
...

All my life I have known
The shape of a track through sand and rock and stone
to the edge of pools where dark shadows
fill the water's face with reflected sky and willows
...

Why do you fly, lone traveller,
winging the surface of the dark water
When all have left and flown
to nest and home?
...

This is my physical body, recovering
From the onslaught of the enemy
This body that You, O Lord my Creator,
Formed in my mother's womb.
...

Dawn comes
with a faint lightness
on the eastern horizon
before the splendour
...

Blankets wrapped around me
warm as your loving arms,
I stretch out a hand in the darkness,
Knowing tension and tiredness
...

I left with plans
of journeys into life,
impressive sights, exhilarating sounds
the coursing pulse of friendship, dancing, wine
...

Blue irises,
tiny, unfolding,
Against a backdrop
of green, arching spires
...

Here I am for your pleasure-
Enjoy my humiliation,
Savor my degradation,
Even though I asked for it,
...

In the stillness of a winter night
when all the world is hushed and gone to bed
I walk alone the garden paths
and watch the myriad stars
...

cocooned inside this
bravely decorated cave
watching teardrops trickling,
down the windowpanes, trapped
...

not just for the dark
sleek headed kelpie, leaving
but for the little girl
in the window watching
...

A college art assignment
was my first
self-portrait.
Then the teenage-girl studied
...

discarded
broken, tossed aside
sharp and hurtful she rides
adrift in an ocean of aquamarine
...