New Poetry by David Lander

Cousin

Night. The wind frets.

Squeezed close in your sitting room we
discuss our cousin. We love him but
is he that cuddly eccentric he appears or
does he strangle children?

‘Course not. We laugh and read his work and laugh again
and paint the picture of his life.
We pause again and think again, concerned
by his rural isolation. How
the world folds in on him, on us,
how we have become what we were not.

We read again and laugh again but
close the curtains, stoke up the fire,
listen as your house shifts in the wind
and talk of something else,

return again to what we would prefer not to;
his life, circumstance, our lives,
what we were, might have been and have become,
what we knew and what we guessed,
what he saw in that small town, that road to nowhere.

We hold his life up like a torch seeing ours.
in stark relief. Shadows deepen.
Your house is quiet. The fire settles.
The wind has gone elsewhere
fretting done for now.


- David Lander 2017

David  has previously published in The Australian, The Age, Overland, Tirra Lirra and Australian Poetry. He has had careers in education and theater. He now lives with his partner in Hobart, Tasmania.