Sultanas under the carseat

Once more the dark clots over the rooftops
And half-red skies homeostasise
into clouds collapsing from the weight
of their dying light.

I have clodded the pavement with running shoes —
getting shabbier and more worn —
this last half hour, and heard the night wind
cut the eucalypts, and heard the night wind
hush the grasses.

Her future unfolds to my steady footfall,
and the twilight, and the hulking bushes,
and the hunched lamposts seem the threadbare
curtain and rusty prop
for a fevered passion play.

It would seem that only those with
a salesman’s self-regard,
a silver dollar disregard
for the objections of others,
men and women with cereal-box morals
and TV-dinner aspirations
get time in this country.

It would seem that only those
with confessions for Oprah,
those who would make themselves
glass for Big Brother to shine through,
those that would rat and steal and lie
to buy and buy and buy
get ahead in this country.

So let her carefully cultivate
the old tribal connections,
find campfire value and
hearthside worth
in appearing with soup when they are sick,
in writing when they are bereft,
in the quotidian economy of human manners.
And may she unyieldingly demand
the same of any man worth knowing.

Let her shape her mind,
taking satetsu for her substance,
and hammering and folding out
a wit as flexible at the core
but as diamond hard at the edge
as the best
shogunate steel.
With this wit employed
in a clowning gravity
in giggling philadelphic service
and flashed not
for the simple pleasure of cutting.

May she truly understand
the sweet sweat, the happy bruises
of the living boxing ring,
and know exhausted satisfaction
that throbs through gloves to the marrow
but suffuses being.
Let her turn to embrace suffering
knowing it to be a spectre that
dissipates at dawn.

Let her love to dress,
perform and play
and bewig herself in a thousand
disguises, a thousand faces,
a thousand smiles.
But may she have a raucous fool’s
derision for the flatulence
of fashion.

Let her love the company of others,
into a wide circle turning
should she mix and fold and mix,
But may she find comic,
be split risible at
the peacocking of prats.
Call her balloon-pricker,
fire starter
glass peerer
flame studier
litmus test
miner’s canary
catalyst
or
polygraph.

Call her the most
loved
the most adored
of daughters.

(with apologies to W.B. Yeats, whose far greater and far more classically nuanced poem inspired this, and with whose words I couldn’t agree more. Except that bit about women having opinions, and voicing them. Oh, and being hawt, but not too hawt. That stuff is naff, if well written.)