Jen Webb
Jen Webb lives in Canberra, and is the author of a number of works including the poetry collection, Proverbs from Sierra Leone (Five Islands Press, 2004).
Bête à chagrin
a thin morning, Canberra cold, and the cat
is sleeping outside, he’s dozing out there
dying in the sun, not knowing it, he thinks
perhaps how sunlight feels on skin, how birds’ wings
sound the air, he tastes the drugs on his tongue
this is the matter of his life
a life of feeling not thinking. Of being not might be
a human heart can’t be: I am want, he is satisfied with is
for him an easy death, for me old words
like chagrin come to mind, and I
must make the call, rule the line
he purrs again, I stroke his staring coat
he’s metaphor of course; all cats are, all loves
he blinks, dying in the sun
I can’t find the gap between want and ought
now might be shifts into will and don’t becomes yes
the sun the only bright spot on a hard-edged day
Outside Euclid’s box
the cyberworld has given up the fight: space is still solid,
time remains a mystery, the fundamentals still rule – that
geometry of one and three, time and space, that box our world
but you know, and I know, time is sometimes now, sometimes then
or when: outside Euclid’s box it folds like a paper crane, taut
surfaces hiding what Euclid could not know;
tug the paper wing and time is squeezed in here, stretched out there
the walls shift, the tremble takes its time, one wall falls, three
remain – height and length and width – they shudder
as space shifts like a tale; as there is folded onto then
as where is drawn out beyond what seemed to be its end –
what remains?
the story arcs from me to you, time trembles, and space,
the walls fail: when does far away become
just here, or then become now? When
does that old arc thread
here to there, the line from then to now,
the story, the trembling tale?
Wednesday morning
So here we are again, back at the tipping point
poised between stop and go
Another Wednesday lifts its blinds to check the day.
Sun, again. Blue sky.
A flotilla of clouds heading this way
morning light of course on leaves.
Below the tree three birds stand, eyes on the sky
where the hawk takes his thermal ride
the little birds describe his flight
then freeze as he turns their way.
The tree falls still; even time hesitates: the clocks run
to and fro
confused by the unlikely sky
Janus scratches his head, looks to
and fro, defers the day