(Sonnets might just be the thinking person’s limerick. Every now and then I feel compelled to write one)
The Crash
They planted peas the day the markets fell
in measured rows, each one spade’s-width apart
and watered them and covered them as well
in mesh to keep the hungry possums out.
No jitters to distract them as they dug,
while stopped for tea they talked of their new home,
the day was warm the baby sleeping snug
allowed rare time to share their time alone.
No queer vibration worth the slightest note
disturbed their day. The indexes’ dive south,
downtown, sent ripples through the Lightcorp float,
but no sign here. She traced his hard, sweet mouth
and breathed a little lighter for it seemed
she had not erred to dream what she had dreamed.
~
At five the baby cried out for a feed
her husband watched it suckle at her breast
If this was lust, he thought, then lust was need
and that enough. Where greed, not need, was best,
in city towers, broker’s screens flashed red
their urgency, as if the world might tip.
She wiped her breast, their happy daughter fed,
then, buttoning her shirt, saw his glance slip.
so flashed cream flesh and then a smile his way
and said, lest unsaid things be left to chance,
‘the silverbeet can wait another day.’
They kissed. A bank of monitors blipped once
the screens, refreshed, announced another loss.
They went inside. A shower passed across.
~
Wall Street opened lower to their snore.
In Asia anxious markets followed too.
She rose for feeds at one and then at four,
Lit only by the television blue
she let her daughter snuggle in and slurp.
‘…in crisis talks…’ a late-night newsbreak said.
She patted the girl’s back to make her burp
then laid her in her cot and kissed her head
and went to rest. He turned and nuzzled close.
‘Tired Love?’ he said. She barely heard,
but heard enough to know that words like those
meant every bit as much as any word.
For careless words in billions broadcast round
knew not of love nor peas in fresh-tilled ground.
~
small stories about love 