Poems of Lonely Vale

When I was a child I never talked much
sometimes people don't understand me when I do talk
"Why do you mumble your words so much?"
My mother had no teeth
and my brother had a hairlip and a cleft palate
and my father was in the navy, then the police
and then in the prison service; and he thought it better
if we stayed away from other people
and the only relatives that ever visited
never talked to me
except my cousin who could talk heaps
but she always made fun of me
so I kept my big mouth shut

and when I had a baby, I never talked to it
and asked the health sister if it was deaf
and he was a quiet little thing, and we lived
50 k's from nowhere, and his Dad only
ever talked about fences, sheep,
engines, firewood...

So I took the baby into my silence
where I read books and spent winters
in bed 'cos it was so cold, snowy-
ranges wind crashing on a bare hill,
the house fifty feet long made of cocoa butter
boxes, green wood, second hand everything else,
and fifteen feet wide to get your breath in before the
next buffet, when the wall would ripple
all fifty feet of it, and one bush dark night
half the roof came off before the baby learnt
to smile.

I didn't know much about babies then,
said to David I might as well go shoot myself,
he found something to do outside,
and I went back to bed
in this place where the fog didn't lift 'til lunchtime
and the sun disappeared at four
I didn't know then that the black dog bites
as gentle as rain
as soft as your cuddle with the words
"sometimes tears
just fall..."

© Liz Winfield