Poet’s Corner, InReview compiled by John Miles

Poems: My Days and Return From Eden

This week’s Poet’s Corner features poems from Colleen Keating and Richard Clarke.

CJ

Compiled by

John Miles

Apr 03, 2025

My Days

by Colleen Keating

 

These words are not about the sea

its white froth spraying wildly

into a silver sky and yesterday

shining with the glint of gems

their twinkle tapping my forever breath.

A sea that swirls at the rock edge

undermining the cliff grain by grain

sometimes rock by rock

that takes greedily and some days

gives, a shy curl to the beach 

 

They are about the days of this past week

elusive as the scuttling mud crabs, at my feet.

 

Return From Eden

by Richard Clarke

 

Shoulders slumped at the wheel while

stars illuminate the road ahead,

across the dry paddocks lie

the lights of the homestead.

 

Sprawled across the cracked back seat

twin sons verge on slumber,

drained by the shouts and shoves

of a company of cousins.

 

Carrying the boys indoors

their parents share a smile,

celebrate a rare day’s delight

amid long slow months of drought.

 

 

Colleen Keating and Richard Clarke are members of Sydney’s Pennant Hills Poets Group.
Bio notes for them can be found with their previous Poet’s Corner appearances on 14 March and 28 February.

Poet’s Corner, InReview compiled by John Miles

Poem:   Seduction

This week’s Poet’s Corner contribution from Colleen Keating

looks at one of the masterpieces of modern art.

CJ

  Compiled by

John Miles

Mar 13, 2025, updated Mar 13, 2025

Seduction

bathers in naked strokes of light

pose

unburdened

 

I hear saplings crack in their play

and laughter as they lounge

in lusty rhythms of flesh

against blue –

Cezanne’s illusion of reality

 

here loss… blur of grief

is an enigma

free with the bathers

caught in beauty

immersed

in their unfinished form

suspended from meaning

 

escape for the day

I linger sheltered

under his chestnut tree

 

The Bathers, Les Grandes Baigneuses, Paul Cézanne

 

Colleen Keating is a Sydney poet who has published four collections of poetry, including The Dinner Party: A poetic response, and two award-winning verse novels in Hildegard of Bingen: A poetic journey and Olive Muriel Pink: her radical and idealistic life. Her new poetry collection Ring With the Bells, is due in mid-2025. Her books are available through Adelaide’s Ginninderra Press.

Editor’s note: readers may like to refresh themselves regarding the story of Cézanne’s painting The Large Bathers, considered one of the masterpieces of modern art, that was still unfinished after seven years at his time of death. Then there are his multiple works of chestnut trees, based on those of the Cézanne family estate in Aix-en-Provence.