Condemned

It had been on death row since we’d moved in,
too close to the front of the house,
blocking sun to our daughter’s room.
But what finer tree for a garden than a magnolia?
Those three weeks of fondant bloom!
A mistake to prune: it suckered,
sending leggy shoots up like bamboo, ruining
the fractals of its oriental geometry.

Sometimes you must start over.
We sawed through limbs, then trunk,
paid someone to wrestle out the root system.
A pair of lorikeets watched in consternation
from the guttering, their home sundered.
We replaced it with a weeping cherry,
the kind that turns back on itself,
never growing any taller.

We did this work together one weekend,
my then-husband and I, the last thing
we collaborated on, apart from
bringing up our children. I miss it all—
the house, the tree, the lorikeets—
especially in late winter, those few weeks
when it almost felt worthwhile.
I’m told there’s more light in the house now.

**

Ambiguous Loss

Your child has bitten hers,
and you don’t know what to say, to make it right
with the woman who is like a sister to you.

She smiles and says, We’re solid, you and I,
like it’s inviolable, your holy bond.
And you believe her at the time. You do.

*

Driving past the kids’ old school today,
you saw her in the distance, corralling
her youngest through the gates. You waved.

She might have raised her arm.
It was early and the light was low;
you really couldn’t say for sure.

**

Gratitude

Trailing sleep and antiperspirant,
they abandon milky bowls, toast crusts,
and the echo of an accusation—a book lost
or stolen—their schoolbags huge as turtle shells.
You drain your lukewarm tea, unpack and stack
the dishes in the dishwasher, clean
the sink, strip the beds, tuck in fresh sheets.
You are up since dawn to make this happen.
Outside, the day has also risen early
to unfold clouds, smooth out the muslin sky.
Hazy light makes light of labour, dials
the sun’s warmth up, low, then rising hourly,
and, when the missing book turns up, you realise
that you have never thanked the morning either.

 —————————

Audrey Molloy grew up in Ireland and has lived in Sydney since 1998. Her debut collection, The Important Things (The Gallery Press, 2021), won the Anne Elder Award and was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize. The Blue Cocktail was published by The Gallery Press and Pitt Street Poetry in 2023. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Manchester Metropolitan University. Her work has appeared in Best of Australian Poems, Island, The London Magazine, and Poetry Ireland Review.