The two poems this week are from Adelaide poet Valerie Volk, whose prolific output includes the three verse novels A Promise of Peaches, Even Grimmer Tales and last year’s Passion Play.
Close of Day
The blind horizon has swallowed the sun.
He went, protesting,
vehement, strident.
then sank, despairing.
It was no gentle going.
That flaming ball
fought his last battle
in a blaze of red and gold.
Onlookers watched the struggle,
cameras popping,
but knowing their own deaths,
like his, inevitable,
swallowed into darkness.
A Villanelle from Autumn
The season ending filled us both with dread.
All that is lovely passes, ends its day.
The trees are weeping tears of leaves, you said.
The burning gold still glowed bright through the red
Of claret ash that flamed the hours away,
But season ending filled us both with dread.
The green lawn soon with fading leaves was spread.
They fluttered down in an ironic play.
No, trees are weeping tears of leaves, you said.
They mounted till they masked each garden bed.
I knew the price that we would have to pay.
The season ending filled us both with dread.
The summer flare of love we’d shared had fled
And autumn chill now like a blanket lay.
The trees are weeping tears of leaves, you said.
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My eyes were bright with tears I would not shed.
We felt the grief of the farewells to say.
The season ending filled us both with dread.
The trees are weeping tears of leaves, you said.
Valerie Volk is a former teacher, lecturer and education program director. Her award-winning poetry and short stories have appeared widely in journals and anthologies and her first collection of poems “In Due Season”, 2009, won the Omega CALEB Prize for Poetry.
Readers’ original and unpublished poems up to 30 lines can be emailed, with postal address, to [email protected]. A poetry book will be awarded to each contributor.