HALCYON DAYS: for my late mother
The Star of David crowns
the old pine tree,
a woman waits;
grass sprouts from her,
she’s taking root.
A piano swims through
an ocean of glass, takes
residence again, watchful.
Small fingers bridge ebony
to ivory
Someone on hands and knees
polishes the floor to honey,
small bed-socks glide
toward morning
Snap-shot-
together, apron-chic, polka-dot
wooden spoon stirring.
Chocolate- smudged,
tip-toe-table-top tall,
remember?
Bonney Bombach
2017
THE REHEARSAL: For Claire
In yesterday’s mossy garden
on small girl knees, entwined
in childhood’s kiss, we conjure
fairy cakes of earth and petals,
our mother’s kitchens close,
our bedroom walls transparent to
our wills and wedded beds,
our nightly whisperings
an unheard rehearsal
for the day.
Bonney Bombach
2017
VICARIOUS
Blond, groomed
like her prized Samoyeds,
straight-backed.
For her daughter,
a confection spun of
satin and tulle, she has
plummy-mouthed ambitions
to rival the show dogs.
Wants her to be a winner too.
Father, beaky as a bird,
cross-eyed behind Coke-bottle lenses,
his presence an absence,
status unknown.
My ten year old self surveys
this mismatched coupling –
ballet mum,
brittle as eggshell, bright as steel
has leashed them all!
Bonney Bombach
2017
BITTER STIRRINGS
Tramping around the lake in sensible shoes
stripping off in the gathering heat.
Elderberries dangle on bright sprigs,
blackberries straggle, enticing.
An overhanging runner, prickled as
a fish hook, snags me.
In the untangling, a childhood tumble
of purple-stained Sundays gathering berries
baskets brimming. My mother’s story
spills from hers- your grandmother
scavenged in the Wienerwald, men away
fighting in the war, alle weg.
I can almost smell the tears she shed
on her father’s return from the Kaiser’s war.
‘The Jews were good enough for that’ she says,
bitter stirrings.
In all my years I never saw her weep,
the grief too deep. I carry the weight
of all she lost –
the Fuhrer had other ideas.
Bonney Bombach
N.Z, 2017/19
Wienerwald – the Vienna woods
Alle weg – all away
THE WITNESS
The mother stern, thin
no sun within.
Small daughter stands
hiccup- helpless in kitchen
head thrust back, water glass
shoved to mouth.
The mother, persistent, towers –
something about drinking
water
backwards.
Witness to this horror,
at eight I‘m already resistant
to her tyranny.
It’s well the father has no hiccups-
she’de tip him backwards too,
his roly- poly warmth succumbing
to her steely will.
Fast forward >>
no surprise to hear the
teenage daughter breaks,
institution-crazy.
But wait, perhaps the snapshot’s
too black and white, a little
blurred around the edges, for
only now, six decades later,
I make no sense of the
backward-drinking caper.
Still, my feeling was right and
I’ve no tolerance for standover tactics!
Bonney Bombach
2016/18
SPILT MILK
I know nothing of the Gunai
or Boonwurrung people,
nor of sealers or whalers;
no memory of dolphins or penguins
playing the cold ocean of Bass Straight
where promontory juts, though
I’ve shared their sheltered coves and
thrusting headlands.
But clear in mind’s eye, sweeping
beaches, a tidal river, my almost-cousin
and the salty lick of summer.
My émigré parents make bush and beach
their own. Seated at camp table, eucalypt
and canvas our constant companions, a
Tilley lamp throws light white as stars,
its mantle transparent as jellyfish.
Mama serves dinner on bright plastic plates,
my ‘cousin’, fair as I am summer dark,
reddens, tongue-tied, then bursts to tear.
Startled, I look to Mama who works her magic.
It’s not spilt milk that’s made a small girl cry.
‘I.. I.. I..don’t..like.. cooked.. carrots’ she blurts!
Her teasing family will have had a field day with it!
Bonney Bombach
2016/19
THE PHOTOGRAPH
(for Claire: and in memory of my photographer father)
A proof sheet image no larger than
a Thumbelina doll fetches me back
to an unremembered day
seven decades past.
Dressed in summer flimsy we stride
a grassy paddock scattering air, my
younger head bowed in uphill concentration,
one foot determinedly follows the other.
Eucalypts clump dark on distant hills.
Her hair, tender as citrus blossom, drifts
over shoulders, a satin bow peeks like
rabbit ears, skin pale as moonlight
high contrast to mine.
Our little girl arms slung round each other
as if we’d never part, a moment
captured in black and white,
my father, camera welded to hand,
invisible behind us.
Bonney Bombach
2017/19
ICE CREAM
Hitting below the belt with
velvet gloves.
Quite a little bitch,
let me tell you.
The milk bar man scoops
ice cream to cones, then
with flick of wrist, dips
into rainbow sprinkles,
our after-school treat.
Beside me in mama’s car
my school friend’s plaits
frame her small face.
There’s something limp about her.
She licks her way to
sweetest end, each day surprised
to see my still-heaped cone,
and I, with tongue of practised forger,
delight to have fooled her
yet again.
Bonney Bombach
2016/19