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    Adult Language Warning
    Adult Language Warning
    Adult Language Warning
    Ebook88 pages22 minutes

    Adult Language Warning

    By William Robertson

    ()

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    About this ebook

    At the time of writing this book, William Robertson was a homemaker. His poems bring a new passion to the ancient domestic scene, and to everything else he looks at out of that often-turbulent centre. He ventures with care "into a swelling sea/ of silted meanings" equipped with his own elegant flexible vernacular, shaped precisely to the task of lighting up the trials and wonders of ostensibly ordinary days. These poems ring like crystal-hard edges of a tender heart.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrick Books
    Release dateOct 15, 1991
    ISBN9781771311564
    Adult Language Warning

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      Book preview

      Adult Language Warning - William Robertson

      Day

      OUR TABLE

      HOUSE-CLEANING

      By the time you get home from work

      I've already thrown your parents out

      or it's my parents

      or your ex-husband.

      See them lying

      askew in the snow

      and me in the doorway

      dusting off my Popeye hands.

      I punctuate my script with slammed

      cupboard doors, rough-cut

      vegetables, a kick at the dog

      none of them able

      to cure a week of being closed up in a house

      with three sick kids

      while outside the world moves on

      and in here I chop my way

      to another meal

      feed the whimpering dog

      and throw your parents the hell

      out of my house.

      MID-WINTER

      Christmas has left me

      tired as the tree

      by the back fence

      where it waves

      one piece of tinsel

      drops its needles

            on old snow.

      Pitching through the rutted streets

      in a car that will never

            warm up

      January is a fun-house ride

      the attendant has switched on

      and abandoned

      and I could bring all this

      dissatisfaction home to you

      or I could tell you

      how the moon through the trees tonight

      was a golden dish

      of branches streaked

      with snow.

      In this slow and frozen time

      I risk this little gift

      that may slip and shatter

      on sudden ice

      between us.

      CONDITIONS STABILIZE

      The occasional thrashing

      of a tree branch tumbling snow

      but mostly the columns of smoke

      from all the battened houses

      go straight to a sky so cold

      its whiteness aches like this window

      stretched tight across our warmth.

      This morning

      after I'd pumped the car to life

      waited for you and the children

      and the neighbour's children

      kneeling by the car door and hoping

      for a good day as I fretted

      the driver's door lock

      to a compromise

      you climbed into the car

      and agreed to nothing but

      getting where you had to go

      selfish as wind chill

      and cold as my hand

      on the broken door.

      Now we've talked

      made our apologies.

      I told you how

      leaving your office

      the children were quiet

      in the back seat, waiting for directions.

      On each right turn I let

      the door swing open, cursing

      the cold and a wrist I thought

      would surely break.

      We find this funny

      and the

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