COMING HOME
Here I am with my winter heart, my winter
body like an old suitcase. It’s summer,
the trees limp and wilting in the drought,
my hair falling out, dark strands
in the basin. It’s as if when she died,
I died, my soul popped out
and gone travelling to Iowa and on the London
Underground. Oh, oh! That little lady’s
lost the plot! Behind my back
everything has changed, the fields in ruins,
the suitors within the house. Look at the way
he looks at you , she’d said. Love’s tiny
brightness, raw, unrefined? Again
I am in two minds, hers and mine.
From Settler Dreaming, Wellington: Victoria UP, 2001
© Bernadette Hall
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