Diane Fahey

for my Mother

A sound between breath and utterance

as breakers crumple to spindrift.

Above the heave of eucalypts, seagulls

surf the air, the swallows loop and feed.

We sit at ease by the myrtle willow,

its fronds astir; unmoved, the hibiscus

mauvely in bud, your burgundy roses.

Blackbirds and wattlebirds stitch the trees

together: each soughing of wing feathers

a half-whisper from the unconscious.

Whenever the wind grows wilder,

forest sounds without a forest; the speech of leaves

forced into one voice. Later, silence:

dusk unfolds like a hothouse flower.

Diane Fahey is the author of twelve poetry collections, most recently The Wing Collection: New & Selected Poems and The Stone Garden: Poems from Clare, both shortlisted for major poetry awards. She has won various poetry prizes, and in 2014 received a literary grant from the Australia Council to support the writing of a poetry collection set in the West of Ireland.