April

---

My Papa's Eyes
by David Fraser

I see my papa's eyes
Weighed down
With two round stones
Smoothed by water
From the river.
My mother's tears
Drip upon my neck.
I reach across
The wooden box,
A kind of boat
Lined with my mother's shawl,
Not satin.
We'll hack at the soil
For years
To pay.
My mother's friends
Keen through rough
Scarves and fists of scars
Held close
To their mouths.
The tears flood over me,
Flow into
My father's box
Fill him up in his
Sunday suit,
My tears seep
Into the neat round
Bullet holes
In cloth
And skin.
They overflow
His coffin,
Fall as if from high
Mountains
Onto the floor
Trod thick and firm
By all our feet,
And fill the room, and
We swim
Like fish and gulp
The sadness in
Wishing we were
Brightly coloured
Birds.


(Previously published in Kookamonga Square)