by Jude Aquilina

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Home has revealed its corners and shadows,
paper piles under chairs, dust on skirtings
as if a lover has become a spouse – instead of visiting
between a rush of work and meals by candlelight,
the house and I have become nagging spouses.
It keeps showing me jobs to do,
flaunting cobwebs in every corner.

Yet, behind these doors I feel mole-safe
thankful for warmth of walls, fat pantry,
tap flowing with clean water. I recall
walks along the lake when the herringbone sky
swam salmon and gold and you spoke of the rock
and the energy belt that runs like a vein of opal
through the Fleurieu Peninsula.

This intimacy with self and place has me singing
for the bones of the unnoticed, catching
backyard secrets, my hands wet with soil again
and my arms full of sunshine. 
The phone’s flirting screen blurs
as I wander to a burgeoning vegie patch
My house has moved in with me
relaxed, we share our quiet spaces.

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Jude Aquilina is a poet and arts worker from Milang in regional South Australia. Her poems are published widely in Australia and abroad. Jude has poetry collections published by Wakefield, Picaro and Ginninderra Presses and she was the 2018 winner of the Barbara Hanrahan Fellowship.