Tuesday Poem: "Windowpane" by Rhian Gallagher
The cat rasps her claws on cabbage tree bark,
a note of bird, full chorus done.
Grasses wear a soft embalm. Twilight
could be ripped with engine roar
or the slam of a door, could be
pre-earthquake crackling. At the window
seeing through then seeing the through
— waved rippled glass
bubbled, a larger lozenge
you press your eye to:
edges fur, earth and tree,
all the old familiar ground
made queer. You live a moment of between
opened in a distraught glass. The glazier
left a perfect tear.
.
© Rhian Gallagher
~ published in Shift, Auckland University Press, 2011
Reproduced here with permission.
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On August 23, I featured Butterfly, from Rhian Gallagher's new collection Shift (AUP) on the Tuesday Poem Hub. Since then I have been slowly working my way through the collection, chiefly because these are not poems you zip through. Each one demands time, effort, thought—and very often compels a swift return to re-read.
Shift is divided into three parts: Shift, Butterfly, and Shore. To date, I have completed reading the first section, Shift, which I feel deals with: place—the shift between New Zealand and England and associated journeys; with time—the shift between childhood and adulthood, experience and recollection; and family—the subtleties and shift of the emotional currents that shape our lives.
I asked Rhian if I could feature Windowpane as my Tuesday Poem today because for me it has a strongly New Zealand feel, but also because of the deeply observational nature of the poem, and the way it captures that sense of experience and recollection, "now" and—in the same moment— "then."
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To read the featured poem on the Tuesday Poem Hub and other great poems from fellow Tuesday poets around the world, click here or on the Quill icon in the sidebar.
