How long since he’d sliced and salted a tomato?
There was almost nothing he touched:
silverware and bed covers, expensive notebooks
sometimes the floury crust of a gourmet burger
the younger skin of a grandchild or subordinate.
Somewhere, another old man walks through
an overgrown paddock on a morning
without frost. Waist-high in feed and weeds
the tips of his fingers touch grass and thistle
the destruction he has fostered all his life.
About Ali Jane Smith
Ali Jane Smith's poetry and critical writing has appeared in Cordite, Overland, Southerly, and Sydney Review of Books. She is co-writer (with Aunty Barbara Nicholson and Anne-Louise Rentell) of the musical theatre work 'The Sirens Return', produced this year by Merrigong Theatre and The Society of Histrionic Happenings, and in 2018 she was commissioned to write a series of poems to accompany 'Chromophilia', one in a series of exhibitions celebrating the 40th Anniversary of Wollongong Art Gallery.
Website:https://alijanesmith.wordpress.com/Further reading:
