Landscape and jacaranda — Grace Cossington Smith
Is she sitting?

              Or is she standing?

                          In the open air.
No, she is sitting.

              Her eyeline lifts towards

                          the flowering.
The sun is behind her

              but I cannot see

                          her shadow on the grass.
Time of day is strange.

              It could be almost any time.

                          It is overcast.
Within reach of the house

              within which she lived

                          the most of her life. 
Are there footsteps in the hallway,

              a clattering, a chinking

                          in the kitchen?
But she tinkers on. I am imagining

              a foldaway canvas stool.

                          A palette.
Today the very day

              the jacaranda begins to slough

                          her purple mantle.
Every profligate year

              until it might as well be

                          this year as hereafter.
There the sudden slope of doubt

              that falls away

                          into the unforeseen.
Nothing ever quite comes off,

              nor should it.

                          Mountains looming.
I am standing at the tip of that slope

              looking back at you,

                          Grace.