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Cilla McQueenonline works |
KITCHEN TABLE Oyster tang, a misty salty morning, sky ridged like the roof of a dragon's mouth grazing on lilies - I am thinking of far blue islands, crosscurrents deep in the sky, paua under rocks and bronze kelp swirling, flocks of muttonbirds skimming the water. The black wings beat and glide above clear green. North-east over trees and houses, the harbour and dark blue hills far and clear, pylons striding westward to the power lodes of southern lakes. Above us, Motupohue, staunch full stop at the end of the land. Chilly and sweet, sunshine in Liffey Street. Clouds flee and gather, darkening for rain, wind whirls around the black hill and slams down on the town, sunlight blares through bright between indigo clouds. At the kitchen table my pleasure is handwriting in lissom superconducting ink, in silence but for the fire and the fridge. The wind sings. The borer are eating the house in tiny bites. I sprinkle an oven tray with flour like stars, like snow, remembering being newborn, held in arms and carried to the window to look out at snow and stars in sheer delight. Slow rain prickles on the iron roof and then the roof dissolves, storm-sluiced. A thunderbolt cracks over us, writes lightning on the sky. The wind in eaves, in walls and windows draws a sound from everything it passes, a meditation within the sound, a voice, murmuring. Within the tall quiet house built of the heart of trees, a poetry of memory and time. There is a listening quality of silence in the house. Amethyst light in the hallway, the sky outside like a gull's wing. Currents of grief and laughter flow through days changeable as weather, chaotic, fruitful, resonant - laughter and grief, anger and tenderness, shadow and sunlight chasing each other across the landscape. Their supple vines weave back and forth through time and wind-pierced weatherboards to hold us all in a creel of love. In time things arrange themselves, patterns evolve from chaos, times arch from darkness into darkness, etched by light, by love, laughter, life's abrasion. Time is place. The house sleeps, flames whicker in the Shacklock No.1 (Improved) coal range, her warm cast iron heart. Spare old house, archaic, threadbare - surely in its oblique dimension the soul does not desiccate as the body does with age, but burns the brighter for long life. The wind sings, the house listens. I write at the kitchen table. The law of Murphy reigns - that what can happen, will, and consequences bloom like clouds beyond their butterfly cause, resolving and dissolving as if they never were except for memory, a star at the edge of sight. In Liffey Street time dimples and spins like the surface of water.
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