DOORWAY Poem by Jane Gibian

Already you are cushioned unwittingly from tears,
and the quilt is an excruciating weight against the body:
devising meticulous plans for a departure, almost sanely,
makes a mockery of the carefully chosen nectarines,
the unblemished green capsicum on the benchtop.
A half-withered leaf on the footpath is perhaps
a greyish mouse: there is this or there is
nothing, or only something unbearable
like waiting for a sense of indifference
to everything; but the corpse of a gum tree
is shockingly white against the brown-
tinged pastures. Still, you hear
the left-hand voice of the fugue,
like a tide rising within us,
until all you can do
is retreat behind
your eyelids
and close
the door
tight