New Poetry by Linda Stevenson

Dwelling

I live in one of the oldest, continuously
inhabited houses here, so walk carefully
in my gardens, delicate on flagstones
which might be brittling; sashay
kindly around my lawns, their intermittent
flowerings, probably better not to lean
on weak fence palings. I keep to that
old-fashioned way of open doors,
you can slip in without trespass,
if you’re lawful. In fact, if the windows
were cleaned well,
you’d see inside easily, all the rooms.
I occupy them all, simultaneously,
being shadowy and unlimited
in progression, doing kitchen things
in the lounge, carrying laundry
into the guest room, brewing a coffee
for you in the backyard shed,
grieving in hallway spaces,
decanting a red wherever.
I am as sharp as a spray of needle
grass, acute as that roofed angle of corrugation,
transparent as bricked-in walls hit by nuclear blast.
Be aware of history, my long trajectory
of residence and upkeep, my earnest
ownership, ancestral rights of home,
my sovereign right of welcoming.


- Linda Stevenson 2017

A founding member of Melbourne Poets Union, facilitator of poetry groups in gaols and community centres, contributor to anthologies. Chapbook “The Tipping Point” published in 2015, feature guest poet on Radio 3CR “Spoken Word”. Active as a poet within the online poetry sector, hosts regular Salons at her home in Frankston, Victoria.