Written by
Dale Harcombe |
This time I know
I will never see him again.
For a time he played the game,
like a child experimenting with blocks,
building towers and fortresses
but never bridges.
Bridges are hard.
Invariably his feet would slip,
before he found
the acceptance parents had denied
and other children refused him.
Acceptance he couldn't recognise
even when it came, like waves
gentling in his life.
Institutions, foster homes,
he knew them all.
Fourteen going on ninety.
Knowledge gleamed in his eyes.
Though he has since been
swept out of reach,
particles of sand cling and
memories are water-cold companions.
*first published Westerly Autumn 1995
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Written by
Dale Harcombe |
My daughter raises the smooth
brass kaleidoscope
and watches as coloured glass slivers
conspire together.
New worlds create themselves before her eyes.
Garnet spires flirt with sapphire
and turquoise.
Topaz and amethyst meet in harmony,
a selenic mystery.
A melody of stars singing a tune only she
can hear.
Eclectic patterns shiver and shimmer
then splinter,
sparking off at tangents of
tourmaline and jasper.
An image complete in itself.
I had a kaleidoscope once.
Sometimes
I still see oblique patterns.
Slowly my daughter turns the wheel, finds
a jewelled tapestry
to her liking, and hands the kaleidoscope
to me.
For a time I see the world she sees
and it is good.
*First published LiNQ October 1990
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Written by
Dale Harcombe |
The hushed dark hugs the streets.
Somewhere a cat snaps the silence.
Dogs begin to bark, like a pack
moving in for the kill.
Women shrink in their homes.
Shadows slip
through the night and
stars dim their lights
as cars flash past.
When they disappear,
silence, heavy as hate, descends.
Hours stretch like elastic
that finally snaps.
Dawn spreads its stain
over the sky.
Seven years later
young women walk again
through lonely streets.
Screams taunt only those
who remember.
*first published Northern Perspective Vol 17 no 2 – 1994
This poem was included as part of the exhibition in memory of Anita Cobby held at Q theatre in Penrith 2003
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Written by
Dale Harcombe |
All week, in this rented house,
sea spray and whispers of wind
weave through the eucalypts,
like a Sondheim melody.
Through the pewter leaves
the sea glimpsed from the wooden deck
is, at times, teal silk.
Other days it is grey.
Longing stirs like waves
about to break on the shore
and sometimes they lift
and swell like hope,
as they pound the sand.
From this wooden deck
far above the beach, the sand
has lost its power to cling and
irritate like problems unresolved.
Other times the waves rise and crest,
only to evaporate,
the way dreams do upon waking.
But I know, when I go home,
the sequin of sea spray will linger
on my eyelids, sleek
and beguiling as a promise.
© November 2002 Dale Harcombe
First published in ‘My cat cannot have friends in Australia,’ the anthology of the 2004 Wollongong poetry workshop.
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Written by
Dale Harcombe |
Frail as smoke, she drifts
through the crowded train,
bringing with her
the cold ashes of poverty.
Without a word, her bruise-blue eyes
try to niggle each passenger
to part with coins or a note.
The sign pleads her story:
Three children in foster care.
Like promises of happier times, some
passengers toss hard-edged confetti
at her, before hiding behind
newspapers or over-loud
conversations. Others dismiss
her like an errant child
with swift, silent shakes of their heads.
I look at her canescent face
and know I have seen her before,
on a grey, Sydney day in George Street.
‘Homeless, hungry, and cold’
her sign read then, as she curled
like a cloud on the footpath
near Town Hall.
In the dusk of a blustery day,
people, toting bags emblazoned
with designer labels, walked past.
Their gaze sliding away from her like water,
they turned toward the nimbus
of lights across the street, glittering
like angels in the trees.
I walked on too, then wished I had
turned back. But the tide
flowed against me.
With nothing else to give
I came home and wrote a poem.
© May 2003 Dale Harcombe
First published Artlook February 2005
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Written by
Dale Harcombe |
Your ears will never hear sounds
that to me are ordinary as air.
From the hour that you were born
the tight white shell of silence
closed around you.
You edged away from friendship.
Silence clung and stung like sand,
smothering words before they could
break free.
Sand has a brittle sound
as it stutters underfoot.
But you are no longer like sand.
Though your ears will still never hear,
words gather, demanding as seagulls.
Now, you stretch wings towards the sky.
Glide closer to other lives.
Reach them with the rising tide
of your imperfect speech.
*first published Westerly 1993 - Republished Central Western Daily January 12, 1996
recently republished in ‘On Common Water’ the Ginninderra 10th birthday anthology
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