I remember when they painted the skin-white walls
and brought an unknown sky into the space the organ pipes
reaching like gold painted trees beyond it I went to church
in my straw bonnet the front of my hair piled too high my Bible
large in my gloved child-hands my young brother unruly in my
care attracting busty heaves until small children’s time in a side
room I wonder now if they devised it because of us My eyes
fixed on the blue It is why I kept going back

Going to my grandmother’s church that one time
we walked to a main road to catch the bus Gallagher’s factory
must have been close I always get a hint of the sour processing
of tobacco when I think of that time We were well happed up
but our breath was visible under frozen noses and the eeriness
of new electric street lamps Trying to make conversation she
said to me your lips are purple you’ve got a bad heart I bit my
bottom lip feeling for true colour under the transforming light
I didn’t understand the attempted humour but I knew bad hearts
Her son my father died from one An awkward moment

There were no birds
unless you count sparrows nesting up in the gutters
or starlings living in City Hall throngs of them unleashing
at dusk like bats from their caves Or the harlequin exotics
stuffed by ornithologists for the museum Glass bead stares
on branches stripped of their leaves not a prayer left in them

She took me in as a teenager
told me of a girl who fell pregnant before she was wed She was
still angry with the boyfriend even when she saw them sitting up
in church married with three children all smiling in a row and
after what he did to her! She was a woman of belief this was
the closest she had to sex education She was my church she taught
me empathy compassion I would’ve written Marilyn Munroe off
as a junky only for her brief sermon on the Hollywood industry
the stress of their public lives over the top of the radio presenter

I painted a pair of landscapes once
hills stretching heavenward in all their brightness I could’ve
eaten that cobalt and the Prussian blue squeezed straight from
the tube ambling downhill Cobalt is a summer blue even in
winter It is predictive Here I am looking out on the rural after-
rain arching into cobalt space I would never have thought it

There’s a fence now across the crest
on the other side the neighbours have planted trees on the
decline and the canopies are encroaching on my sky It grows
colourless as I say this and yet trees are my cathedral Kangaroo
silhouettes graze along it and one day two males fought for
territory or breeding rights boxing like girls until one took off
wheeled hurtled back into the other’s gut Retaliation was the
acrobatic leap into the air the balancing on the end of the long
powerful tail and coming down with the hind legs and feet to
disembowel As far as I can tell he missed This was a miracle

Another miraculous moment
The time a semi-trailer was tailgating us on the Pacific Highway
his lights bouncing on our back seat Suddenly in front of us
barely visible in the pitch a gigantic motor home doing a three-
point turn FOR GOD’S SAKE I couldn’t just slam on the brakes
the semi would’ve run over the top of us I simultaneously
flicked on the emergency lights braked on and off until the semi
pulled back then I BRAAAAKED With a split second to spare
the motor-home got itself three-point-turned into the oncoming
lane and his missed caravan park entrance An overtaking lane
came upon us giving the semi the chance to get around us not a
second to spare When we got to our holiday unit I just lay down
I thought I saw angels suspended in the indigo of that evening

Even today my old church boasts of its missions
A couple of years ago I found myself back in my home city
across the road wondering what colour the interior walls are
these days It was another Sunday School though that brought
in the missionaries to give us talks We heard about witchdoctors
biblical diseases still rife crude tactics for women with difficult
births They brought us the miracle of faith and prayer Then they
took our money It was worth it Here is my love of a good story
my curiosity about what happens in the rest of the world and a
rage for what women endure

I want to go back to that road on a Sunday morning to hear
the church bells and how well the bell ringing tradition has been
preserved Are they all reduced to one ropey note or do they still
sound out like flocks of competing songbirds with polite pauses
and solo interludes to allow the faithful to refocus their direction
avoid inadvertent divergence to another denomination?

Corncrakes are globally endangered now
You wouldn’t have thought so back then We all sounded
like corncrakes according to our mothers and melted the ears
of our marzipan-hatted choir leaders I see their call is written
as crek-crek but if you go by the name corncrake and how it
is pronounced there really it is somewhere between crek and
creak and there isn’t an alphabet for that in this hemisphere

Once there was a river with tall timbers and stars above
I thought I could be buried there made peace with that torment
the afterlife Sometimes I’ll hear a bird call out in the dark and
I think you too? Thinking about this life and how you’ve got on
with it quite well how much more there is still to do? You
stretch your crane wings as I refold mine impatient to leave the
night ajar unfold in the light-bringer’s next lambent blue

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Lizz Murphy has published fifteen books. Her tenth poetry title Bitumen Psalms was recently released by Flying Islands Pocket Poets. The Wear of My Face (Spinifex Press) won the ACT Writers’ ACT Notable Award for Poetry (Big Press) 2021. Spinifex Press also published Two Lips Went Shopping and her popular international anthology Wee Girls: Women Writing from an Irish Perspective. Lizz writes in a variety of styles from prose poetry to micro poetry, often incorporating found text. She was born in Belfast and has lived in Binalong in rural NSW for a long time.