A year with Lumi

Sianna Madigan

After 3 AM paralysis, 
peristalsis of the brain force-feeding 
horror to grasping anxieties,
I decide to get a dog.
But when I hold his soft body—
tangled legs wrestling cold hands— 
sharp-hooked thoughts scramble
superimposing sadness,
warning how easily fragile bones break,
so I can love only fearfully. 

Still—
                                               time passes,			
and all the while his steady heart is beating
in the long grass, across sweet winds
his nose sifts through summer
rising and falling in layers of lives 
invisible to me. 
The transience of all
quick, little creatures
only spurs him onward,
sends him bounding into the thicket
moving deftly after life.

Scampering paws insist ‘now’, 
a message pressed over and over
into dark earth 
its reverberations calling me 
from my fears out 
into young air,
into untidy fields
and the clear morning.

In this way we continue on: 
together, alive within the world.

Sianna Madigan is a recent Media graduate and a new poet. She lives and writes in a small town in country NSW with her dog, Lumi.