What can be given

Rose Lucas

My father’s complete works of Emerson
taped up at the edges
 
sits on the shelf by my desk
its heavy green covers
 
bible-thin pages	                 whisper to me
of the quiet
 
evenings of his reading          
an angled lamp 	              gas fire
 
volume on knees                pencil
tucked behind ear like a bookie
 
I’m tracing the mark of his fingers
a quiet turning of thoughts where thickets
 
of woods might        give way
to the surprising clearings of
 
what can be said          and  
what can     sometimes    be given
 
hand      to worn hand      along
these verdant paths  

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Rose Lucas is a Melbourne poet and academic at Victoria University. She is the author of 5 poetry collections, the most recent being This Shuttered Eye (2021). She is also the editor of the recent Lockdown Poetry: The Covid Long Haul. She is Foundation Editor at Liquid Amber Press. Her next collection, Increments of the Everyday will be published by Puncher and Wattman in 2022.

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