A is for Aggregate

(formed by the conjunction or collection of particulars 
into a whole mass or sum; any hard material added 
to cement to make concrete; to bring together, 
collect into one sum, mass or body)

So far the pieces don't match.
Diary entries leave out the dramas.
Letters carefully tailor those same
life-altering events. There is often
much ado about nothing. All
we need is love.
Most of the poems are angry.

The drawings are of another world
even the sketches of frangipani trees,
women with babies on backs.
They're all about women, they are
not about women, the head-shrinks
would say they're about me.
I study them now for hints.

They clearly demanded intense
pressure on the coloured pencils
- the Derwents - the pressure
of living and working in foreign
community, needing a new
language. I put the humour
into brief stories, short fiction.

I laid out the beauty in acid-free
photo albums from Creative Memories.
All memory being creative, I search
and research what's gone,  the sum
of parts assembled, the hard stuff
added to delete, repair, review
make whole a phase of life anew.

Off the Cuff 18: The Brain's Workings & To the Moon

The Brain's Workings

Every time I butter toast in the morning I think of S.
She has nothing to do with toast, not even a toastmaster
club, and I don't know if butter would or wouldn't
melt in her mouth. She would eat grain bread, not white.

She is lodged there in my daily bread, my softened
butter spread. My knife slaps jam like paint, and
still I wonder how she is, what she's doing. In my mind
a blank canvas. She's not an artist either, or writer.

It was only recently I discovered this auto-habit
of thought. I stop thinking of her the moment my knife
falls into the sink and  I bear my toast to the table
after cutting it carefully in halves, licking the knife.

The thoughts vanish and next morning re-occur.
We shared a house in a landlocked country years ago.
We met at University. We cleaned a beach together.
What am I meant to do with these crumbs of memory?

NaPoWriMo  18


APAD 18   prompt: "To __________"

To the Moon

You golden crescent bright in the season
of hoe, secateur, sickle, you cheesy
Cheshire Cat grin, you bright reminder
of universal laws. Driving home, I watch you
pull up the doona on your bed of cloud,
leap out again as we all do, having forgotten
perhaps to set your alarm, get a glass of water.
Then sink again among the fashionably
black and white soft bedclothes, sleep
swinging, sweet chariot, yellow pendant
on a long long long long chain of gravity.