Books & Poetry

Wednesday, Apr 19, 2017

Poem: Koalas in the Heat

Books & Poetry

In today’s Poet’s Corner, Pat Lee contributes a poem from her new book “Nudge the Morning”, launched this month.

Compiled by John Miles

Wednesday April 19, 2017

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Koalas in the Heat

Phascolarctos cinereus

They came during the worst weeks:
the air was dry, crucible dry,
the sun rose and set without birdsong,
houses throbbed under a clear fierce sky.

They came along the creek bed.
They came to our garden gate.
They were on the ground,
each hugging a tree trunk.

Over millions of years they’d evolved
to survive Australian summers.
Now they awkwardly drank the water we offered,
clumsily clutched branches we’d gathered
and looking at us with little button eyes,
chewed eucalypt leaves with anxious deliberation.

The male left.
The female stayed for many days.
Each time she saw us coming,
with urgent then calmer anticipation
she held out her large clawed paws.

I cried.

Following retirement from teaching in 2011, Pat Lee turned to her poems and other “drafts of a lifetime” that she had kept in an old munitions box. With that work, she joined Friendly Street Poets in 2012, and was first published in its annual Reader the next year. Her poems have subsequently appeared in further Friendly Street Readers, and in other publications both here and in New Zealand. With Parkinson’s disease, Lee was a 2014 Recipient of an Arts SA Richard Llewellyn Arts & Disability Emerging Artist Grant. Today’s poem is from her first published collection, “Nudge the Morning”, which was launched this month and can be found here.

“In today’s consumer-driven, fast-paced world”, says Lee, “many in society don’t connect with or even notice, the natural world around them anymore. I would like my poetry to encourage people otherwise.”

Readers’ original and unpublished poems of up to 40 lines can be emailed, with postal address, to poetscorner@solsticemedia.com.au. Submissions should be in the body of the email, not as attachments. A poetry book will be awarded to each accepted contributor.