Poem: The Fairy Garden

The Fairy Garden

My daughters grabbed stones from the riverbed

and set them in the garden shade

rough painted in acrylic pink and red.

Waited as light and hope began to fade.

They beat the sun to morning, pressed hard

against the window for signs, the flutter

of timid wings. But nothing. No calling card.

Routine again. Breakfast. Weet-Bix. Toast. Butter.

Next night something woke me. I walked possessed

through dark and took a marble from their room.

The glass in night air, ice cold, impressed

against my palm, as I picked four shuttered blooms.

I had never seen magic till I saw their wild eyes.

As they yelled the fairies came! I saw something flitter by.

Living in Adelaide with his wife and two daughters, Rory Kennett-Lister has been published variously, including in The Lifted Brow, Overland, Collect Magazine, and by Adelaide’s Friendly Street. A writer of criticism, fiction and creative non-fiction as well as poetry, he works as a creative director at a national advertising agency’s Adelaide office, after some years of the same work in New York at an award-winning advertising, film and TV production company.

Readers’ original and unpublished poems of up to 40 lines can be emailed, with postal address, to [email protected]. Submissions should be in the body of the email, not as attachments. A poetry book will be awarded to each accepted contributor.

Image: Wikimedia Commons/ John Anster Fitzgerald