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Best Poems Written by Jennifer Magrath

Below are the all-time best Jennifer Magrath poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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The Homecoming

THE HOMECOMING

For the first time
I’m in the space where I need to be.
Whatever I look at, 
Is just as I always imagined it could be.
Now I see all as it was meant to be.
Wherever I go, I know that, in this open space, of my mind
At last, I have finally come home.

JM 2012

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Memory

MEMORY

In the city,
The sun often wears a veil of grey mourning,
Woven of smog and dust.

In the evening,
The stars retreat from the lights
Of the city far below.

Far from the city, 
I walk the beach, sun hot on my skin.
Waves wash cool and white over my feet.

Seagulls dive and snatch,
The remains of the fisherman’ catch
And the kite glides and falls like a stone to earth.

The sea rolls on and in.
An endless murmur,
Through the days and the nights.

My eyes, accustomed to this light
Of sky, of sand, of dry bush land.
Watch the sails of a lone boat.

And I think of many things, as I walk along this beach.
And as always my thoughts return to you.
You with eyes the colour of the sky.

I wonder where you are in the city
So far away from my world, from your world,
Of sea and sand.

I think of you and the distance in between us.
Distance that as time has passed,
Has grown too far to breach.

I know this, but still I think of you,
As I retrace my footprints,
In the dampness of the sand.

JM  2012

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Dancing In the Rain

DANCING IN THE RAIN


Watching by the window
Of moth spattered cobwebbed glass.
In grass long fine and seeding
Two children, dancing in the rain.

Across the weathered grey verandah
In the pale light, of summer’s afternoon.
Dance through the muddy puddles
And the soft misty falling rain.

Two brightly coloured figures
Whirling with the wind.
Shrill, high laughing voices
Brown wet shiny skin.

One tall and fair, one small and dark
Kicking high and muddy.
Flying now on wings of dreams
Lost in childhood’s timeless journey.



Jenny Magrath
Mt. Timbeerwah 1992

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Observations From a Train

OBERSVATIONS FROM A TRAIN

From my window, the train moves ahead and back.
Like a silver snake, 
Sliding on a slippery track.
The outside world stands mute,
Changing, untouchable,
The white half moon follows
High, in the blue of the afternoon.

From my window, evidence of nature’s play.
A space scape,
Skinny fire blackened trees,
Brown, black earth.
The wind moves soundlessly,
The birds are gone.

Bridges span rocky river beds
That the sky has long forgotten.
Brahmin cattle, skin hanging
Like washing left on the line too long,
Raise heavy heads in sorry.
Gone the green, gone the joy,
Sucked back into the earth
And the the mother cries.

Rusty cars, silenced long ago,
Lie where they died.
Not returning to the earth,
Not returning anywhere.
Just there, forever.
Houses call from their decaying depth,
Who loves me. Who will sing to me?
The loose iron on the roof, cries no-one.

The skeletal dog, strains the frayed rope.
Windows dark and empty eyed, follow me.
Who sweats and dreams,
Loves and hates,
Sheds dusty tears as I move past?

From my window, the outside world stands mute.
I am caught in a time capsule.
Untouched by the heat and waste.
But the memory, ah the memory
Plays on through the night.
As I keep moving, always moving past.

Jenny Magrath

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Love Found

What to do with love re-found?
Love that crept into
A heart suddenly sprung open
By a boy
In a world where the call to prayer,
Floats in the grey dawn.
A boy yes, but a man boy.
What a wondrous time, 
Before time flicked the page
And I saw the words ‘The End’.
Still I held the page open, 
Until the words blurred into infinity.
Time will tell an unlocked heart, to forget.
But even as times passes,
I say ‘Not yet, not yet.’

Not yet time, to un-see myself,
With the eyes of yesteryear. 
To feel again the years of time,
Nudging at my side.
Not time to return to old things.
This was not a lover’s love.
Nor could ever be.
No lover’s caresses
Amidst rumpled sheets, tumbling floor-wards,
As first light, breaks the night.
But still this love glows so bright.
No, it is not time to forget.
Not yet, not yet.


JM 2012

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Walking On the Stars

WALKING ON THE STARS


Waves break white
Far out behind the tide line.
The summer wind, moves the light night clouds
As the stars slide down to touch the trawler lights.
And the sky
A dark blue tent all around
Is pegged to the sea.
Whisper wind
Moves through dry sand grass
Soft on bare skin
Like fine cotton sheets.
All around the sky, the sea
And the sand a mirror lake, reflects the stars
Shining phosphorous in the dark.
Our footprints deep on the sky
We are walking on the stars.

Jenny Magrath
Fraser Island 1988

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So Now

SO NOW

I have come back to the place where I fell in love again
Fell in love with life, 
Learned of love again.

I  listened once again to the call to prayer, to the sounds of the sea.
To my heart. and remembered you.
And I knew that I had been given a gift
That would be with me forever.

And so I travelled away again
To an island, not far, yet another land
And here with a heart now open,
I loved again
And loved you again
For the time we had,
For the time, when everything was possible.

And so it was.

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Untitled

UNTITLED


In a dust try hut
Under a hot red sun
A small child dies, 
Arms like sticks
Legs the same.
A chest with bones
No thicker than a chickens.
Eyes wide with surprise
And the flies.

Not far away
A young man cries
And the gun he carries
Falls away.
His eyes also watch with surprise
As the sun fades into darkness
And the earth turns away.

In a bed,
With clean white sheets
Another man lies,
And listens to the traffic
Dull, down in the street.
He also cries
As he dies
With roses at his feet.
His death is not less
Not a soldier
Nor a starving child.
Just a gay
Who worked the streets.

Pomona February 1988