For children

Poems I think children may enjoy

Grandfather

Your faded black trousers look like charred treetrunks.
Your eyes are like shy leaves. Above them floats
your white hair, like a vague afternoon moon.

I put my hand on yours: rough bark.
You breathe slowly: wind in dry branches.
You say something: a crow
or a saw.

You’re a still man
in a stirred-up country.
Tell me your old old story.

First published in The School Magazine Touchdown

Pinocchio

I can’t walk around without making a clatter
I can’t sit close to the fire
I can’t give my father a soft embrace
I can’t even want to

I can’t help being made of wood
I can’t stop my nose growing
I can’t work as a marionette: I have no strings
I can’t say what truth is

I can go a long way from the town
I can live in the belly of some gigantic fish
I can live without oxygen

I can sharpen my nose to pierce the fish and escape
I can use my special nose to dig the earth
I can maybe become a tree again

First published in Creatrix

A bricklayer

He starts at seven with the others, warming up
in the cool shade before the sun surmounts the trees,
radio chattering, playing songs he knows.
He begins a new line. The mortar, right mix
of cement and sand, lies heaped like mousse on the board.
Lifted, distributed, lifted, distributed, then levelled
with one long light sweep of the trowel.

Each brick weighs just one brick
and fits his hand. Brick
buttered, placed, tapped, and softly swiped; brick
buttered, placed, tapped, and softly swiped; brick
buttered, placed, tapped, and softly swiped; brick
buttered, placed, tapped, and softly swiped; brick
buttered, placed, tapped, and softly swiped:
he signs each brick with the necessary flourish.

He makes the ancient movements evenly.
His arms and neck and chest. His back and legs.
The wall
rises,
rises,
rises,
and is done.
Long after he is gone the house will stand.

First published in The Mozzie