After Blake
Erin Martine Sessions (Sydney University, Australia)
Sugar-gliders are scratching on my roof
and I wonder how the tin doesn’t scorch
their feet – are their mortal soles somehow proof
of a higher power? Prostrate on my porch
lies a bluetongue lizard sun worshipping.
Is it genetics or luck that’s warming
his blood? Apostlebirds are gathering
in the grass, a family communing
while they scrounge for seeds. I don’t want to preach,
as poem transfigures to parable,
because it is you whom I want to reach:
In this world, who is the real animal?
They claim no god, yet act as though there is.
We claim god, then act like he doesn’t exist.
Erin Martine Sessions is Sydney-based poet. Her work has appeared in Australian Love Poems 2013, Contrappasso, Sparks, and SWAMP. She is in the final semester of her Master of Letters at The University of Sydney and, in her spare time, grows peach trees from hat stands.
