Coffee Shop/Supermarket Amoretti

A Post-Modern Petrarchan Love Sequence in Scottish Sonnets

Introduction

This sonnet sequence is a contemporary exploration of Petrarchan love and its transformative power, reimagined for a post-modern sensibility. The narrative sequence is interspersed with “Coastal Interludes”, where images from the natural world expand and comment upon the personal narratives.

Like the classic Petrarchan poets, the narrator experiences intense interiorised longing, idealisation, and the oscillation between hope and despair. Yet the sequence extends this tradition: eros is understood as a daemonic force acting on the psyche, shaping the soul through grief, observation, and symbolic imagination, in the spirit of James Hillman and Keats’ philosophy of “soul-making.” Loss and impossibility are not failures but catalysts for psychic and aesthetic growth, producing moments of vivid vision and symbolic resolution

In integrating interiorised desire with natural and symbolic imagery, the sequence situates love, imagination, and grief within a continuum of ethical and psychic development, culminating in a world en-souled by images and interiorised experience. It is thus both a continuation and a contemporary reinvention of the Petrarchan tradition, demonstrating the enduring potency of impossible love in the cultivation of soul and art

The Coda and Epilogue offer a gentle resolution, contemplating love, loss, and the enduring power of imagination. Here, the sequence shifts from the specificity of personal encounters to a meditation on image, memory, and the human soul, leaving the reader with a lingering sense of reflection and wonder.

When an academic “beach bum” relocates to the New South Wales South Coast to care for his aging mother, he expects the quiet life of a scholar in retreat. Instead, he finds himself caught in the ancient, “Eros-fired” currents of the Tomakin IGA and the local coffee vans.

Through a sequence of 67 Scottish Sonnets, the author maps a four-year journey through longing, rejection, and eventual transfiguration. A narrative of the “Labyrinthine Pit” where souls are mined, and where the mundane act of grocery shopping becomes a gateway to the immortal image.

Mark Allinson holds a PhD in English Literature from Monash University (1988) and has taught literature at both Monash and the University of Wollongong. His poetry has been published internationally, including the chapbook Blue Glass Cities (Exot Press, New York, 2006) and appearances in several anthologies edited by William Roetzheim. His work has appeared in various print journals and online magazines over several decades. Now retired on the New South Wales South Coast, he focuses on long-form narrative verse and the application of traditional European forms to the Australian landscape.

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This work is dedicated to Eros, the Greek Daemon.

ἔρως

(Based upon Diotima’s description of Eros in Plato’s Symposium)

Eros is not Cupid,
No biddable little boy,
For I have met with Eros
And his arrow is no toy.

He is a mighty hunter
A master of artifice,
Seducer and enchanter,
No cheeky imp of bliss.

His hair is lank and tangled,
He sleeps on naked streets
In doorways and on benches
Where the sleet and hail beats.

His feet are bare and blistered
And his self-respect and home
Are lost, like Need, his mother,
Who weeps in want alone.

And day and night he haunts me,
This wounded, hunting youth,
Desperate, looking hard, as any
Lover of the truth.

Tomakin

Five hours down the coast south-east of Sydney,
The road leads through the town of Batemans Bay,
Named by Cook, while dreaming of steak and kidney
Pies as he pushed Endeavour all the way,
Back to the place now known as the UK.
The coastal town of Tomakin comes next
Before Moruya, Tuross with its bay,
Eventually to Melbourne, best take Rex,
To avoid all of the pot-holed bump effects.
But Tomakin is where our story starts,
A story with lots of love but no sex,
A tale of tangled dreams and broken hearts.
The time-line of our story lies between
The pre, the Covid, and post-Covid scene.

Tina, Lily, Laura

Your story teller, once an academic,
Moved up to Tomakin to help his mum:
Living alone, now facing a pandemic;
Happy to care and to be a beach bum.
And for his daily shopping needs would come
To the local Tomakin IGA
For groceries and perhaps a bit of yum
Occasionally to get him through his day,
And to save a dull drive to Batemans Bay.
But three young women working in that store,
Tina, Lily, Laura – each in her way,
Like winter storms to wreck a peaceful shore,
Would wreck his peace for sure, but in its place
He’d gain a deeper soul with Eros’ grace.

The Proto-Lily

There was, truth be told, another Lily
Employed there at the IGA before
The one we’ll also come to know as Lily
Moved to work at Moruya’s Woolie store.
This proto-Lily bailed me up and swore,
One day when aisles were empty, and she said,
In a whispery voice, trembling and raw,
But also laced with undertones of dread,
“You’ve been around and done so much and read,
I feel quite giddy standing next to you,
And there are times when I feel like my head
Begins to spin – I don’t know what to do!”
This proto-Lily soon moved overseas,
And her going away afforded me some ease.

Laura

My Laura story starts one afternoon
As I entered the Tomakin IGA,
Just as the sun was setting and the moon
Had lifted clear above Malua Bay.
Haloed in a nimbus of curls so fey
Stood Laura, our eyes locked and it was done:
Both pierced by one bright arrow – Eros’ prey.
Four years ago our story thus begun.
And Laura all these years has tried to run
To flee this wounding arrow in her heart,
A pain to wish to win or often shun
Myself, improbable right from the start.
But Eros is no biddable little boy;
No Cupid, and his arrow is no toy.

The Wound

The arrow which hit Laura hit her hard;
Much harder – since the first – than it struck me.
In fact, that arrow actually scarred
Her in a way it took some time to see,
And longer, then, to recognise her plea.
Some months beyond the IGA event,
I found I was in truth no longer free
To think of Laura since another scent
Was wafted my direction, so I went
In captivated bondage to Martina
Whose coffee van was like a circus tent,
And I attended daily that arena.
So since it seemed to her I did not care
Laura changed in ways I could not bear.

Martina

Oh yes, Martina Golding-Piccarelli,
As plump as pudding, slathered in tattoos;
Confident, the cat queen of the alley,
Among the local Toms her choice to choose.
And Laura worked with Tina – one tattoo
Suggested I felt something quite risqué
And one that quoted one of my gurus.
So fascinated, hooked by this display
Of contradiction I was led astray.
And when Martina bought a coffee van,
Be-witched, be-bitched I headed Tina’s way,
A coffee-perfume-captivated-man.
Thus in this way I lost all thought of Laura,
Putting Tina’s magic van before her.

Circe

Martina, during Covid, took a long break,
And sold her van to buy a mini shop,
Towed by her tiny car that stunk of clutch-bake
Moved on by cops or council every stop.
Martina’s shape had changed – she gave the chop
To all her pudding pudge and she was now
Slim and svelte enough to make a jaw drop,
The word among her clientele was wow!
Her beauty strong enough to break a vow.
Martina now was powerful as Circe,
Her potions laced with coffee and cacao,
Be-piggied I could only beg for mercy.
So captivated I was held in thrall
By her bewitching Circe-Siren call.

One of the Throng

Among the ogling throng of perving piggies,
I tried, like all of them, to act sedately,
Some gulping cans and puffing lumpy ciggies
While appreciating Tina’s magic greatly –
Piggly wiggly men all acting straightly.
And spell-bound there where I would long malinger:
“Tina, I asked, “have you seen Laura lately?”
“I called out yesterday but couldn’t linger –
Her answer was a raised middle finger.”
Laura, as I came to see, was churning,
Angry at Tina turning a humdinger,
Seducing me, her Eros wound still burning.
“Tina”, I said, “if I were not so old” –
“Age is just a number, so be bold.”

The Cruelty of Neglect

I often noticed Laura as she walked
To work each morning at the IGA,
She seemed distracted, so we never talked,
As I set off to Tina’s shop to pay
Court to her as I did every day.
Engrossed by her hot Circe-Siren show,
I had no will to go another way;
No will I had another way to know,
And so any resistance I let go.
Laura arrived one day to get a drink
But when she paid, Martina told her no,
The drink’s on me – then Laura in a stink,
Insisting she would pay, threw dollars down:
Then set her jaw and marched off in a frown.

The Shorn Nimbus

Laura now served coffee at the Rivermouth,
Which I passed twice a day when on my ride;
I didn’t need to, it was farther south,
But for the sake of interest I spied
On those who patronised the river side.
And every day I noticed Laura’s hair,
And wondered how she could have shorn her pride,
Her gorgeous cloud of curls no longer there.
I puzzled most at what made her dare.
The penny had not dropped as to the cause.
Why had she uglified what was so fair?
This mystery confounded, gave me pause.
I failed to understand behind her shame
The wound from Eros’ arrow was to blame.

;

Misreading Laura

On many chilly winter rides I saw
Laura alone, slow-walking down the road;
Her nearly hairless buzz-cut was so raw
A blotchy skin of white scalp clearly showed:
A patchy miss-cut lawn too closely mowed.
It made me wince to see her so exposed –
Near bald where once warm fluffy curls once flowed.
Her face, once bright and open, now seemed closed,
As if some penalty had been imposed.
One day I said to Tina, what is wrong
With Laura lately, she seems so opposed
To having any fun now for so long?
Oh Laura has some “issues”, Tina said,
Her liberal friends have put inside her head.

What broke Tina’s Spell?

Martina had persuaded me that I
Meant something very special to her heart,
Her favoured older confidant ally,
Into whose ear her secrets she’d impart:
So I was praised as special from the start.
And even more than this she made me feel
I was attractive to her, not just smart.
And for a man who felt his sex appeal
Was zero this seemed such a brilliant deal.
Until I realised that I’d been played
When I heard her give Sam the same spiel.
One game among so many in her arcade.
My false romantic ego burst one day,
Punctured by truth, illusions fell away

Coastal Interlude

Old Man Banksia

At Burrewarra Point above the waves
On crumbling cliffs an Old Man Banksia stands,
Grinding his groping roots down to the caves
Echoing surf below on hollowed sands –
The powdered remnants of the ancient land’s
Antarctic rock, ground from the mother lode.
Listen and you may hear his prising hands
With lumpy knuckled grip make stone implode,
Tightened by the hydraulic sappy goad.
His gnarl-flecked corky bark is split and scarred,
Spotty badged with a mossy lichen load,
And sticky weeping wounds all black and tarred.
In sunlight, moonlight, calm and stormy days,
Steady in frost, reborn when bush-fires blaze.

Survivor

A Cootamundra wattle found itself
Stranded alone, high on a coastal dune,
Where storms from lows off the continental shelf
Regularly gave the sapling a cruel prune.
Decembers had been kind, but every June
Had thrashed and beaten back each branch that tried
Reaching to south or upward until soon
The tree could only grow to the leeward side.
Like a blown plume of smoke or like the tide
Dragging the river weeds in the same way,
The tree lay prone to northward since denied
All other ways by wind and salty spray.
But sheltered by itself since beaten down,
Each spring it wears the dunes’ sole golden crown.

Return of the Nimbus

Since I was now from Tina’s brew abstaining,
I thought I’d switch to Laura’s shop instead;
The moment I first entered all explaining
Of Laura’s hair was quickly put to bed,
A single glimpse – the answer clearly read:
The moment she beheld me her jaw dropped,
And there she stood agape and crimson red.
I clearly saw the reason she had cropped
Her hair, and even more why she had stopped
Cutting it now, she said, to let it grow
And her golden curly nimbus re-adopt.
Thus was revealed all I required to know:
Laura’s joy to hear I was returning
For coffee, showed her Eros wound still burning.

Return of the Nimbus

The Rivermouth

The Rivermouth became my favourite place
For coffee, for hot chockies, and for smiles,
And Laura’s chockies, creamy-rich, would chase
Cold mornings back for many country miles.
So glad to be released from Circe’s wiles,
From power games and gossip’s agitprop,
From riddled looks and Siren-coded trials
That gripped the heart but never let fears drop.
But no such artifice in Laura’s shop,
No clink of chains nor glittering bangles there;
Where river waters met the sea I’d stop
And breath the freedom of the salty air.
I loved you, Tina, yes, but love can err:
Too brilliant once, too blinding to endure.

Eye Beams

Laura’s welcome, on cool then warming days,
Grew by degrees, as wintery days turned spring.
But what amazed me most was Laura’s gaze,
So calm, so unselfconsciously to bring
Our eye beams twisting on a double string.
Sometimes she had to break off as the ache
Of standing, gazing, napkins ‘neath her wing,
Hands full of plates, afraid to drop and break,
Would cause her weary loaded arms to shake.
It seemed sometimes she couldn’t get enough
Of dreaminess, afraid she might awake,
To find a dreamless world a bit too tough.
And Laura, though I hope your dreams come true,
Perhaps, maybe, I am adream like you.

The Blunder

And then I accidentally told my age
To Laura: Five years younger than the Stones,
I confessed. I overheard her outrage:
No way, she said, could I love such old bones.
To which she added sundry sighs and groans.
She seemed to think this knowledge set her free,
That love was reasonable, no hormones
Nor Eros wounds could play a part, for she
Had reasoned such a love could never be.
A reasonable amount of time elapsed this way.
Until that day that I dropped by to see
If anything had changed in her cafe.
For a minute we conversed, side by side;
Then she in kitchen hid and cried and cried.

Laura’s Dark Night

She coughed up bitter tears that afternoon.
Hiding behind wet palms with staff dismayed
At a spectacle they hoped would end soon.
Harry, her friend, a face like thunder made
His rounds, white-knuckled, like a man betrayed.
Her carefully spun assertions she was free
Were lying on the floor, all torn and frayed.
And in their place she could now plainly see
The chains of Eros binding her to me.
A dreadful shock to have one’s ego hit
So hard like this, to feel the hurt and be
Forced to confront the fact she could not quit.
White faced and shaken Laura drove her car
Slowly home that day, with her soul ajar.

Waylaid

Discovering that reason cannot free
The heart from feelings reason never made,
Laura realized she would like to see
Some more of me since she was less afraid,
For with the defeat of reason fears fade.
Thus she, with friends, waylaid upon the strand
Where I would take my daily walk and wade,
Approaching me in towel and togs, and
With an assumption this had not been planned.
She told me to come have a cup tomorrow,
No suggestion or offer – a command,
Implying failure would lead to her sorrow.
Next day I attended Laura’s cafe,
Out on a date, initiated her way.

First Date

Happy, relaxed and comfortable was Laura
When I walked in her coffee shop next day.
I could see her ease soon as I saw her,
She smiling in that sweet, laconic way.
When she was free I came to say g’day.
The fact that she’d proposed this date suggested
The issue of my age was not in play,
With this in mind I felt if I requested
Another date my theory would be tested
And the lay of the land I’d clearly know.
Unless she thought in offering I jested,
In which case this would be a real blow.
Let’s take a drive down south one day, I said;
Within the minute her phone number I read.

Message in the Cloud

Keen to initiate a conversation
Much deeper than the coffee shop allowed,
A situation provided an occasion
For communication sans a listening crowd.
I left a message, floating in the cloud,
On Laura’s phone to say I hoped that she
Was not the ill staff member, Covid cowed,
Whose absence had ensured the shop would be
Closed for days, perhaps indefinitely.
I waited hours and hours for a reply.
I kept checking, checking, hoping to see
A message, but none came, I wondered why.
Two days later Laura returned to work,
Acting upset, like I had been a jerk.

Body Language

Love’s mysteries in souls do grow,
But yet the body is his book.

“The Ecstasy”, John Donne

I tried to read the book of Laura’s body
Pacing cross the grass hands full of orders
Hair bound down all tangled up and knotty
Her sleep-starved eyes fighting off the torpor
Of a sense of her thirsting for the water
Of avoiding all contact with the watcher
Torturing her by wanting all the answers
Turning hard away to avoid a gotcha
When he comes forward with a look of whatcha
Shoulders with a hunch of hating sunlight
Legs of lead to turn her to a lurcher
Fists that clench as if she sought a bunfight
Wanting to tear her hair out by the roots
Then stomp it in the dirt with big black boots.

Laura’s Silence

Not one word passed between us from there on.
She wouldn’t meet my eyes when I rode past;
She made me feel my being there was wrong,
And made me feel her injury would last.
The reason was impossible to ask.
How was I to process my confusion?
The Date, the offered number, I had cast
All doubts of her intentions as illusion:
That she desired contact my conclusion.
Yet my initial message was rejected,
And physical approach met with exclusion.
And while she fumed I was left dejected.
The only way to make sense of it all:
Laura she was terrified of her enthral.

Her Blue Subaru

Six months passed, I sometimes spotted Laura
Walking along the beach or driving past;
And once I almost waved to her before her
Blue Subaru had vanished, driven fast.
And once she strode right past me, eyes downcast.
It seemed to me her Eros-fire had died,
The torch she’d carried guttering out at last.
Past three years gone now since the first she sighed,
But who knows when the final time she cried.
And so I started letting go, resigned,
My efforts to connect I now let slide,
Believing all my love for her declined.
The next time fate put Laura in my way
It was for her to have a final say.

Coastal Interlude

The Bottom Line

Last night the sea erupted, breaking hard
Thunder blows of waves on my piece of shore;
The look-out cliff-face crumbled, chipped and scarred
As wind-forced spray cut ruts down to the roar.
At dawn I walked the strip bespread with ore
Of shrapnel-rock the blast blew from the wall
And strewn where breakers fell to scrub and score
The sand off the beach in a foaming maul.
Dark wreathes of bladder-wrack had laid a pall
Along the length of once high golden dunes,
Draped on tussocks and pasted in a scrawl
Across the rocky wall in weedy runes.
I pondered long on what these sea-words meant,
But change and change and change was their intent.

Elemental

The sea in the night calls my bones and tells
Of the debt they owe to its elements:
Of calcium soaked from its crush of shells;
Of sodium distilled in filaments
Of swaying kelp, churning nutrients
From oxygen, hydrogen and carbon
Atoms that bond and crack in the solvents
Of time and life; recycling silicon
In shifts of sand, and the nitrogen
Falling with the sulphur of tropic skies;
It tells of the blood-debt owed to iron
And of phosphorus sparked in fish-cold eyes.
Your bones are mine, calls the sea in the black
Depths of the night, and I will have them back.

Congo Creek

The creek at Congo Camping Ground runs red,
As red as blood or wine to a rusted sea,
When seasonal rains flush tannins to its bed
And set a gorgeous flood of colours free.
From the sap of gums and decaying blooms of flame tree,
To the slurry of mud from melting termite mounds,
Colours gather from the swamps to the south of Broulee
And flow in streams and rills like coffee grounds,
Where they stew till rains and tides do their rounds.
Add to these the raw flesh inner bark
The rain-stripped limbs of spotted gum compounds
Dissolve to imbue their indelible crimson mark.
From time to time the bush must burn or bleed,
And green turn red is its eternal need.

She-Oaks

Where the Tomaga river bends
Then ends in the roaring sea,
Bearing the mud of hills it blends
With salt and sand beneath the quay,
A stand of she-oaks seems to be
Reflecting on the tidal round.
Bound by webs of root each tree
Supports the rest, secures the ground,
As spindle-leaves weave a gauze of sound.
But now the river wants the soil
They stand upon and all around
Their bared roots warp in the waters’ roil.
And when both wind and tide are high,
The she-oaks touch, and sigh, and sigh.

Lilly

At First Sight.

Heedless of how the wind had come about
To drift my craft beyond all sight of shore,
I found myself at sea, without a doubt
In water deeper than I’d been before.
Slowly the chilling shock of danger’s awe
Subsided as I saw what could be seen
Revealed so clearly on the ocean floor
Beneath this moment’s lens of lucid green.
Such treasure I perceived, no earthly queen
Had ever been more bountifully endowed
With richer jewels, nor a more serene
And pearly presence, vulnerable as proud.
And in this way, with wind and water’s grace,
A glance revealed the fortune in her face.

Like Birds

Like lawn birds, feeding, panicked into flight,
My near approach would startle Lily’s eyes,
Scaring and setting them suddenly alight,
In flight, straight ahead, as a scared flock flies,
Seeking the safety of the open skies.
No other girl I knew had so extreme
A response, like a lawn bird’s warning cries.
But what might this severe reaction mean?
She would not look at me nor even seem
The slightest way inclined to notice me,
No more than she would voice her midnight dream.
And seemed determined that she would not see.
Oh Lily, you seemed frightened to admit
You feared something, but yet you wanted it.

A Lily Found

Four years before a clearing word was spoken;
So noble-proud, so distant, so beyond
All hope of contact, silence kept unbroken
As she worked the supermarket shelves, no bond.
But ah, her lightful eyes, no magic wand
Could cast a spell more potent on my heart.
Would she have glanced, I knew I would respond,
But hardly came a glimpse with which to start,
So hopelessly thus I would then depart;
My age, her youth, I feared she would reject me,
And let me leave with just my sullen art,
All empty of a glance that might connect me.
Then as gardeners clear weeds from flowers away,
I cleared fears, and a Lily smiled that day.

Autumn Song

I’m hanging out for autumn, Lily said.
And what am I but autumn’s self, thought I?
Is not my fading crimson autumn’s red
And gold that smokes the still autumnal sky;
The sky through which a wedge of black swans fly?
Might I not be the autumn you desire?
If Summer’s heat oppresses, tell me why
(If to cooler, still, bright weather you aspire)
Not try my mellow, mild, autumnal fire?
Join me in my season of fruitfulness,
The season where you wisdom may acquire,
For ever-shortening days bring truthfulness:
When the year’s final season comes into view
The clear still air reveals what is true.

Easter Lily

And what a smile that Lily smiled at me!
The Easter Sunday sunrise, I’d explained,
Endangered my morning bike ride by the sea,
As dazzled holidayers could get me maimed,
Thus I came early shopping, I maintained.
And then I saw she saw the reason why
I’d come and smiled a smile which exclaimed
As clearly as a Holy joyous cry
One might make at a new sun in the sky.
Oh Lily, when you smiled that smile so bright,
For the first time we saw each eye to eye,
Now I cannot unsee that living sight:
The image of your face suffused with joy
Will be with me forever to enjoy.

A Lily Lost

When those eternal seconds moved at last,
I turned to do some shopping, as she said:
“Enjoy your day” – that day has never passed;
Indelibly its colours fill my head:
A tapestry wove with gold and silver thread.
Later I saw her, my desire still fired,
I wanted more so followed in her tread.
To ask a question I had long desired:
“Is Lily short for Lillian”, I enquired.
“No, it’s just Lily,” was all she replied,
In a quavered tone as if fear-inspired.
And then she seemed to turn away to hide.
So in this moment she had moved from bliss
To Persephone in flight down halls of Dis.

Peace Lily

Two months have passed since that eternal moment
When joy illumined Lily’s open face,
When her unexpected passion then in foment
All vanished from my view without a trace.
Although I saw her, I declined to chase,
Because I saw that she was in a Hell
Of flight and needed nothing more than space.
And thus I let my interest lapse a spell,
But also noticed she was dressing well.
And thus I sense the rest is up to her,
To flash a smile to re-ignite or quell
With just a frown and any hope deter.
But either way I never will forget
My Lily and be ever glad we met.

Lily’s Wardrobe

Lily dressed like no one ever loved her;
It tore my heart to see her draped in weeds.
And everyday she wore those rags and shoved her
Self respect down where depression breeds,
In self-denial of her female needs
To look and feel attractively attired.
Being ignored by hungry shoppers feeds
A passionate desire to feel desired;
A long-desired longing to be admired,
Which stirs unconsciously, but nonetheless,
At the end of every day she was tired,
Tired of those Woolies’ grey-green rags of dress.
But now she knows that there is one who cares,
Look at the lovely clothes Lily now wears.

Almost

Three months almost was Lily in flight from me,
In trauma from a sun-burst passion flare,
But came a change today – what did I see?
Lily patiently serving, standing there
Knowing I shopped on Fridays, with no care
Or fear apparent, but all calm, serene,
Dressed in sombre blue and down her long hair.
Ten weeks I counted since her face I’d seen,
I dearly wished to know how she had been,
But resolved to say nought about the past
And painful interval of weeks between.
Then at the last our chance to speak was passed:
Though next in queue another till came free
Thus our reunion was not yet to be.

A Good Friday

Today she flashed a smile to re-ignite
The sun-burst promise of Easter Sunday past,
The moment we arrived in each other’s sight;
The moment we denied in chances passed.
And today’s smile suggested what might last.
So still she was, no sign of fear or flight,
A calm suggesting that a die were cast.
All that remains for me is do what’s right,
And all I feel as wrong I swear to fight;
The world will stand against what we may be,
Condemn as base and low our greatest height.
A gulf of years will make a perilous sea:
A voyage as ours must brave a wind of fears,
But when love is truly love who counts the years?

Adream

And when she smiles at you as if adream,
Then slowly with veiled eyes lowers her gaze
And bows her head, you have seen love’s supreme
Admission. It will haunt you and amaze
Each time you recall the rest of your days.
And in this way did Lily say to me
I love you and submit to all the ways
Love may drown us both in its restless sea.
And this I saw and this I saw her see.
But then within a week she disappeared.
Left me to ponder on where she could be,
Hiding, or perhaps departed, I feared.
Lily, I knew our age-gap would cause pain,
But always believed I’d see you again.

A Bad Friday

Driving to Moruya to see Lily
At Woolies, I observed the sky was split
Clearly in two halves: one warm, one chilly;
And no mixture the heavens would permit.
So I pondered a meaning that might fit,
For meaning was required, the sign was clear,
But all that I could do was ponder it,
Meanwhile the image bred a certain fear,
Which seemed to grow the closer I drew near.
On entering I passed the perfume aisle
Where the answer to my riddle did appear:
With the question – pure accident or guile?
Laura, whose control I once refrained –
A new recruit by Lily being trained.

Laura Redux

Laura was the girl Lily was training,
And both had worked together once before.
My connection with Laura had been draining,
From frantic heat to frozen then to thaw.
Till that unanswered text and then no more.
We sometimes passed without a word or glance:
In short we chose each other to ignore.
And yet it had begun in mutual trance:
A flash of light inviting to Eros’ dance.
That dance did not begin, but still remained
A still and even now implicit chance,
A chance that neither of us had yet claimed.
Now between us Laura bent there kneeling,
Taking stock but what was she concealing?

A Crowd of Three

And all the while as Laura bent there kneeling,
Between Lily and me counting the stock,
Lily gazed into my eyes while feeling
Feelings that buzzed like an electric shock
Which passed between and caused our eyes to lock
As tightly as they had ten weeks before,
While the days passed but seconds by the clock.
I felt sweet things but I could not be sure
How Laura might react so I forbore.
What forces had arranged this weird scene?
Did Laura have a spy inside the store,
Whose tales of me and Lily turned her green?
Had she begged a job just to put a spoke
In our love wheel, or all a cosmic joke?

A Lily Missing

Another Friday morning, off to Woolies,
Wondering about what lay in store today;
Tangled up in emotion’s ropes and pulleys,
My trolley squealed as I planned what to say
To a girl I might meet along my way;
Maybe I would find them both conversing,
Seriously at work-involving play:
Perhaps they were store-policies rehearsing,
Or through hot gossip set ideas reversing.
But though I searched the store from cheese to chilli
While feeding my crying trolley I was nursing
A growing sense of doom – no trace of Lily.
Alone on a checkout there I spotted Laura,
My troubled heart demanded I ignore her.

Wasted Waiting

My waiting was, alas, to no avail;
Week upon week and still no sign of Lily.
An island castaway seeking a sail,
And seeing none, beginning to go silly;
Pacing empty beaches, mumbling, until he
Wishes he could forget that sleek white yacht
With lights ablaze so near to shore, but still he
Failed to flag her down and now he has got
Little chance of another pass and what
Ever he does or doesn’t do won’t matter,
Whether the south blows cold or north blows hot;
All he has is his mindless what-if chatter.
I know, Lily, you liked me very much,
But fear this is why you stayed out of touch.

Lily’s Eyes

That was the last time I saw Lily’s eyes,
Pellucid, gazing up, and much in love;
Brimful of trust, bereft of hows and whys,
Alive with Now, no fear nor worry of
A threat from left or right, below, above.
And I gazed down and saw nothing but her
Looking up and no word remained but love.
Then I moved on, leaving her with Laura.
And never more, never more I saw her.
What passed between them I will never know
Though I forever more will still look for her.
Six months I paced the aisles then had to go.
My time at Woolies had come to an end,
My hope like a blown bulb no one could mend.

To Lily

And should I never see your eyes again,
Those vulnerable luminous orbs I adore,
The knowledge to ameliorate that pain
Will be the fact that you can be made sure,
Through such as this, that our souls’ brief rapport
Reached depths as real as marriage decades long,
Or longer even up to past three score:
Once melody is heard you have the song,
Which now is yours to treasure all lifelong.
Accumulating years don’t measure love;
Being fused at depth alone makes love strong,
When the Now’s sun-burst flash takes you above.
Though loves may come and go as years unroll,
One man you know did see and love your soul.

Two Lorikeets

The day I lost Lily, a lorikeet,
A rainbow nestling, scuttled through the grass;
I tried to catch it but its little feet
Soon carried it to where I could not pass,
Down a slope into a pond of stained glass.
The barely fledged but gaudy little bird
Half ran half fluttered into its impasse
Until it vanished, then no sound I heard.
To chase it any farther were absurd.
No clearer image of how I had lost
My Lily, and my pain of loss incurred:
My chase to save produced the silent cost.
A passing friend who watching wondered why
Losing this frightened rainbow made me cry.

Coastal Interlude

Fish-Wish

To be a couta, fired with icy blood,
A bullet-snout torpedo at a shoal
Of mackerel, or at a school of cod,
And after blood and flesh to have no goal.
And never have to argue with a soul,
Yet be alive to sex, though never touch:
Enough to make me wish away my role
Of being human, prone to care, too much
Whirred by gears of hope that grind and clutch.
Sure there’s fear in sighting a shiver of shark
Or dodging a lunge of moray eel and such,
But the blind thrill of drilling into the dark
Of ocean night toward a watery dawn
In wonder, to feed and fly and spawn.

Blue-Glass Cities

A spatter of blue-glass strewn on the beach;
Spark-glitter mounds of vitreous rubble
Of a thousand Venetian vases reach
The length of the sandy bay: the bubble-
Float-sails of the sea-faring cities
Of creatures called Portuguese Man-O-War
Jelly fish. But the wild ocean pities
Neither blessed nor cursed nor ship nor sailor;
And now these cities are grounded in doom,
Blown by depressions and seasonal tides
To be hurled and shattered on the breakers’ boom
And waste into sand while the sea derides.
In my own blue glass city I sometimes hear
A sound like the pulse of a surf quite near.

Losing It.

All are clear and I alone am clouded –
Lately I’ve been feeling like Lao-tzu:
While others dress for power I am shrouded
In doubts and often haven’t got a clue.
Expressionless I stare into the blue
Of sky and empty ocean like a child
Or like a fool who simply can’t construed.
The meaning and is easily beguiled.
And yet some days bring moments when I smile
To feel the world as if myself, yet be
Alone to walk the sands along the wild
Dunes attuned to the constant pulsing sea.
Home in the dark each thunder-hush of wave
Empties the room as surf flushes a cave.

Beached

Surf sizzle, cicada hiss, sultry breeze
Gusts rustle the tough Banksia leaves.
Horizon-breaking combers buzz my bones.
Sand is silent, but sharp fragments of shell
Tinkle with mother of pearl sparks.
The sun strums the bright strings of its spectrum.
In a single white chord of summer hum.
A flotsam log oozes and drips black drops
The thunder water packed into its lumber.
All such sounds my inner ear conducts
To the hollow bell of my bliss-filled brain.
Then, on a lucky day, frequencies rise
To a sweet crescendo and I am gone
As surf-sizzle and cirrus become one.

Laura Wooden

Laura was for week on week so wooden,
Still stiff in her response to all I said;
Her curls all bundled tight like a Christmas puddin’;
Her curt yesses and noes cut questions dead.
Then slowly she began to thaw, instead
Of curt and cold replies began to speak
More fluently – and one word rocked my head –
She signed off with my name! Which made me freak!
Four years without once used this was unique.
I told her how I still recalled her hair
From years ago, and later caught her peek
A look when she thought I was unaware.
Four years and still engaged, it was no crush,
We both still burned from Eros’ fiery rush.

Dancing

So many times on Fridays when I shopped
I danced down aisles with Laura that awkward dance:
The dance you do when passing and you’re stopped
Because the other’s dance blocks your advance,
And as we danced we flashed a smiling glance.
This was as far as any contact went,
Our situation gave no other chance.
So briefly all my shopping day was spent
In such a way I started to resent.
And yet I felt our flame was still alight,
But windy time blows hard so I was bent
On finding some quick way to put things right.
The need for conversation driving me
Above all else, the words to set us free.

Eros Acts

The next move, as I knew, would risk it all.
But Eros fires the arrow, rolls the dice.
The chance of breaking through I knew was small,
But better risk than nods and acting nice,
And soul-fired words alone could melt the ice
I felt below the surface of her smiles,
Mere pleasantries alone would not suffice.
But Psyche-soul has many tricks and wiles
For avoiding Eros’ fiery trials.
I sent a second text, an invitation
To take that southern drive for scenic miles,
In case that non-response an aberration.
Next day I saw her see then flee from me:
A Hades-chased and scared Persephone.

Post Second Text

Like the first, the second text drew no reply.
To answer it would open Eros’ door
To words from which the Psyche-soul must fly:
Fiery words engendering uproar,
And now she ran as she had run before.
So once again she bundled up her hair
In tight bound buns as if she did deplore
The freely floating curls that were so fair,
And for this loss pretended not to care;
Yet in her face the turmoil had returned,
An anguish, heavy, difficult to bear,
A torture deep within that tore and burned.
But Eros is of chaos and the way
The broken heart lets in the light of day.

Farewell To Laura

It had by now become quite starkly clear,
That Laura had resolved to outlaw speech:
Into her labyrinthine whorls of ear
My penetrating words must never reach;
I was the teacher who must never teach.
Condemned to smiling silence I was now
Forbidden Eros’ fiery words to preach.
I would be sad to bid farewell but how
Could I this curse of silence now allow?
Some deep connective linkage bent then broke
Beneath the weight of Laura’s silence vow.
And thus to Laura never more I spoke.
I know you loved me, Laura – now you must
Learn alone the illumined dark to trust.

My Absence

The third week post my final Woolies shop,
Laura’s blue Subaru was at the Cove;
A Broulee girl, I’d never seen her stop
And park beneath that sighing She-oak grove.
Her beach so close, I wondered why she drove
To Tomakin, my favourite strip of strand
Where breakers broke and where I loved to rove,
While listening to that timpani cymbal band.
And high upon the dunes where tanners tanned
I must have walked past Laura and her friend
Inside a beach tent on the platinum sand,
Near where the river turned its final bend.
I think perhaps she might have feared I’d died
And had to check, and so she hid and spied.

Ghosted

If Laura thought perhaps I might have died,
In truth she would have been close to the mark;
For though she proved I lived the day she spied
I was from then an image in the dark.
My voice gone mute, my face a fading spark.
In truth the very essence of a ghost;
A situation final and as stark.
When lovers bid farewell it is almost
As desolate as death itself, at most
A pale approximation of that state,
A condition as bleak and as morose
As loss of life itself, our final fate.
But in a daily practising of death
We clear a psychic space for soulful breath.

CODA

Seeking Lily

I so much missed my Lily I would drive
On Sundays down the road to Tuross Head;
To keep her image for me still alive
From fading any farther in my head.
I wouldn’t meet her there, I knew; instead
I went to see a vision that might ease
My loss, relieving grieving pains ahead.
I knew from trips before this sight would please
But in a sense, I knew, would also tease.
At Tuross, in a park facing the sea,
Down a Norfolk Pine path, the salty breeze
Behind my back, under a bridge, I’d see:
A host of cloud-white lilies dancing there,
Relieving me of loss, easing my care.

The Ivory Curl Tree

There is a tree I know in Batemans Bay,
Sheltered from the southerly icy blast;
And often I will go out of my way
To stare at it as I am driving past.
Then when my business has been done at last,
I park my car to walk and look again,
Especially if feeling low, downcast;
It is a sight that eases every pain.
And on wet days, after a shower of rain,
The curly flowers purl as water flows
To murmur softly as the droplets drain
In longer silver chains as each flower grows.
But most of all its gorgeous flowers that curl
Remind me of a much-loved missing girl.

Tina

Wherever I see beauty I see Tina,
I see her as the dew flares over lawn;
The Smooth-barked Apple wears her skin patina;
I hear her voice when wind makes She-Oaks mourn.
The artful inkings which her arms adorn
Spring to my mind when I see bright bouquets
Of flowers on wedding days by bridesmaids borne.
Even the terror of savage wildfires’ blaze
Carries the beauty of her fiery gaze.
And summer storms with thunderous lightning flash
Remind me of her fierce and angry days
When she with brilliant scorn a fool would lash.
Tina was at one time all of my world,
Now into the world her beauty has unfurled.

Broken Hearts Alone
Let In The Light

Impossible loves will force us to enter
That labyrinthine pit where souls are mined;
Our love-pains drive us down below the centre
Of that velvet cell of self where we’re confined,
Forced underground where eyes and thoughts go blind.
When our Persephones are Hades-bound
In the underworld of loss where we can find
No gentle goodnight kiss or arm around,
Only remembered images abound:
But in this dusty pit we build our soul,
A space we clear from rocky psychic ground,
A dark-illumined place that will console.
Though we might skin knuckles to dig this way,
Our blindness may turn inner night to day.

Epilogue

Images of Tina, Lily, Laura
Live on within my underworld of soul,
Enlightening the dark like an aurora
Whose colours flare and fade beyond control,
For image is our source, substance and goal:
We are such stuff upon which dreams are made;
Imagination keeps us sole and whole.
The image is the stuff of that brocade
We call the world, designed, woven, displayed
By Psyche, Queen of Heaven, source of all.
Worlds surge up from Her ocean, and will fade
Like waves from ripples rise to crests then fall.
And we are born Her bubbles, flowers of foam
To form then burst upon Her sea, our home.

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