Poem: Midlife Crisis
Books & Poetry
In this week’s Poet’s Corner, Glenn McPherson continues December’s look at the seasonal, alongside another timeless subject.
Midlife Crisis
Someone has given up lopping a shoulder-high
Length off the oak tree near home. It is split
Along the horizon where cold wind and porchlight
Sift through. By age five, our body and its implications
Are fixed. The kerf of a blade, handled by a novice
Is unaware of the set of the teeth required
To cut true. Beneath the tree, a crosscut saw lies
In a bed of African daisies. A green ant wanders
This steel land, stooping at the edges,
Testing the air, unaffected by composition.
When I was young and had that aviary, the one
We made from chicken wire and bits of old fence:
I recall it now, how it felt, how it smelled; spent seed
Kernels like undeveloped negatives curling around redolent
Heat. When the birds escaped we knocked it down; rats, like mercury
Fled across the lawn while outside, now, a pair of eastern rosellas
Wait in the ironbark. Will they ever tire of following me?
Back in the study, a book by Adler, What life
Should mean to you, is marked at chapter three –
Inferiority Complex. Crivelli’s, Annunciation, shows
A peasant girl peering from the shadows
On the cover. Given the full picture, she is the only one
To notice when the golden beam of light enters
The cornice into Mary. A wheel of stamps
Next to a stack of envelopes reminds me of a series
Of letters I was to write last Christmas.
Glenn McPherson lives in Sydney. Published in leading Australian poetry journals and anthologies, he has worked as a teacher for more than 20 years. Growing up in small country towns in Central Queensland and North Western NSW, he received his teaching degree from the University of New England, followed by his Masters in Education, then Masters in Creative Writing, from The University of Sydney. He helps run a school creative journal at Broughton Anglican College, assisting students in developing skills in journalism and creative writing. They published their first edition before the COVID-19 pandemic struck, and an interview with the celebrated Australian poet, essayist and teacher Mark Tredinnick was the first to be included in the journal.
Readers’ original and unpublished poems of up to 40 lines can be emailed, with postal address, to poetscorner@solsticemedia.com.au.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.
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