News of old friends ...

news of old friends 

I thought lost forever –

sudden sunshine

We never once ...

We never once kissed on the lips, I remember.

I mentally shrug, thinking it matters little now.

It was forty-odd years ago, I’m eighty-three.

‘That no longer hurts,’ I assure myself, ‘not when

I weigh it against all the lasting things we did achieve’ —

then suddenly I’m engulfed in anguished sobs.

Typing, typing, typing ...

Typing, typing, typing, typing, typing.

I come to some lines of my own

in the book I’m transcribing

and pause to remember the feelings

which prompted them, and

the particular occasion — long ago

and well remembered. Where are you now,

friends who were with me then?

A good cat for ...

A good cat for a witch,

she likes rituals. A good cat 

for a poet, she likes patterns.

She has us follow procedures,

not essential but chosen, and

repeated daily at the same times,

in order to arrive at the desired 

outcome — which is always a long 

smooch and snuggle. She’s a very

good cat for a love junkie like me.

Preparing an old book ...

Preparing an old book for republication,

a collection of poems written from a place of pain,

I confront again the sufferings of those writers, my friends.

I run away often into light-hearted movies on Netflix,

or romance novels that always have happy endings,

or wine, or chocolates, or cuddles with my cat. 

But then I return to the task. If they were strong enough

to live those things and write of them truthfully, 

I can continue to honour and share their words.

Image: cover of an anthology of poems written from workshops conducted in Pentridge Prison, Melbourne, 1981-2. 

As the official publisher (also one of the contributors, as visiting/tutor poets were invited by the prisoner poets to submit our work too) I am issuing a new edition, to be launched simultaneously with my memoir about coordinating those workshops, Breaking Into Pentridge Prison. Because the original volume of Blood from Stone is over 40 years old and pre-digital, with uneven print quality, the preparation has involved retyping every word.

I'm sharing this with Poets and Storytellers United for my own prompt at Friday Writings #72: Writing About Writing. Writing about other people's writing is maybe not quite on topic, but still....