Fortnightly Poem 1.B (Karen’s)

For my very first personal fortnightly poem I would like to share a poem from my most recent book Angles entitled Six O’clock.

Six o’clock

`It was late afternoon, too early for dinner or sleeping…
This was the lip of the night, the black mouth
he might fall into’ - The Death of Noah Glass by Gail Jones

A sliding sun calls the birds to bed

A blare of red, then surrender

Kookaburras and magpies vie

chortle for the last word 

No getting past it—It’s yardarm time

An end and a beginning

Shutting down, closing up, quietening…

Fire, uggsboots, wine 

Six o’clock— even the word slides

into a large armchair with a drink

Not that you get to just sit and sip

Six is cooking time, chopping, brewing… 

One of the day’s clear edges—a defining time

Unlike ten fifteen or five twenty- three

No other time is so locked in

Breakfast can be from seven to ten or not at all

Now paid work no longer defines the days

lunch is also a moveable feast 

The six o’clock drink then, a working mum relic

when you actually needed to wind down:

A drink to mark the end of one work life

and the beginning of another

It is also a sad time – long night looms 

the black mouth you might fall into

Because you’re too tired to be busy

you remember. It used to be the start of together time—

our special time, de-briefing time—

mulling about our day, the state of the world

That quiet comradeship I still miss 

started at 6.00 with a glass of wine…