Running - Vanessa Page

Running

When roadside has turned to red
and desert oaks are stenciled
neat on car window canvases
you’ve run far enough - to where
dust folds over to new thicknesses
taking with it every trace.

It’s too late for the maps, left
unfolded on the passenger seat
you’re lost in odometer’s slow roll
passing bloated marsupials
with legs stiff as tent poles
grasping the sense in endings.

Vanessa Page
http://vanessapage.wordpress.com/

Your Mother's Hands - Vanessa Page

Your Mother’s Hands

In the kitchen

you are slicing fruit

with hands

that remind you

of your mother


Deliberate,

and lined

they betray you


So too,

these beginnings

of crow’s feet

and pursed lips


as you hover over

autumnal hued

laminex


Careful, for

the influence

is catching


First the hands,

second, the

confused diplomacy


a tapping foot

closed gestures

the economic effort


We are all reinventions;

skin, papered

over skin

Vanessa Page
http://www.ipswichpoetryfeast.com.au/2008/winnersother_4.htm#hc4