At the supermarket’s meat counter,

they sell ropes. Yellow and blue.

Things we need when weather turns bad.

One could never be sure when the boat

needs tying off to a cleat.

At checkout, we talk of hurricane Ursula.

It was in the news, it is now by the docks.

My bottled green sea resting on shelves.

 

Across the aisle, a woman looks out.

Trains deliver milk and morning newspapers;

at the end of his shift, a night watchman

lights a cigarette watching umbrellas running

to shelter. He has nowhere else. His children

sent him a blank telegram. Monochrome winds,

he thinks. Time to repair, to build.

The house he was born in no longer exists.

 

©Maria Stadnicka, 2019

Published in Social Alternatives, Queensland, Vol. 37, No. 3.