Dear Robert Hass – do accept my apologies
for the coffee I spilt on pages 325 to 350
of *The Apple Trees at Olema*. It is ironic
really – the first poem stained was
*I Am Your Waiter Tonight and My Name*
*Is Dimitri.* The offending cup carries a kookaburra
on its face, an imported bird known for its laughter
at the expense of others: a schoolboy
carrying a schoolgirl’s bag, an old man
stumbling in his Gene Kelly role
to court a fair lady. Here I am, clumsy
apprentice to the master poet, writing
in dwindling sunlight as clouds drift over.
Not apples but limes grow beside me,
limes which cost a dollar a pop in the local
Vietnamese fruit and veg shop. Beside the lime
stands a curry tree looking for all the world like
a new recruit with his short back and sides –
enough curry leaves clutter the garden floor
to hustle for peace in Pakistan. You may be
slightly appeased when I tell you the coffee
was Fair Trade of a sorts, fair in as much as
we buy it locally to support the café owner
who isn’t doing too well, and who, in her turn,
buys it from the Indian family with the Coffee Club
who are likewise - or like foolish - not doing well.
In economic terms, the heart of Australia
has hardened: not the heart rules commerce
but tax laws and banks. As I shuffle thought
to thought, I wonder what’s Fair Trade in poetry?
If our work paid it would be differently made.
Late in this day music notation of our washing
falls across shadow lines on my page
and dust motes punctuate freely.
Coffee has dried and almost disappeared
where your words sit on the page.
I translate your cover image into
an Australian red apple from our south-west
and a startling electric blue finch
on Lady William’s* elegant arm.
-------
** Lady William is a local delicious red apple.*
--
Andrew
http://hispirits.blogspot.com/
'Mother Waits for Father Late' republished available at
http://www.picaropress.com/
http://www.qlrs.com/poem.asp?id=766
http://frankshome.org/AndrewBurke.html
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