poo sticks
Brent Cantwel (Macquarie University)
they watched my lips
wanting to know:
Curtis Falls?
Joalah?
‘haunt of the lyrebird’?
but my daughters knew
I would hum a wooden mighty :
mighty ghost-gum,
mighty picabeen palms
and one day – deep in the rainforest –
they might too –
or they might pick their own sticks,
leaves
dry-growl bark –
I watch the might
of each decision
trickle-lost
like a poo-stick down a stream
like everything-happening-at-once –
and they watch,
that an easy breath –
that a lonely embouchure
might trick-a-spin alone
around
a stone
to ride the rush,
to drop wet-
heavy
on a pocket of moss
green-twigging newness from darkness to rise –
maybe –
on the hollow luting of a rock –
I taught my first to whistle poo into a flute one Friday.
Her sister mastered – by herself – the wet-bugle raspberry of a fart.
I know it is just her way, and her way
to hum what just might flow-on anyway –
Brent Cantwell is from Timaru, New Zealand and he lives with his family on the Gold Coast hinterland in Australia. He has recently published in Takahe, Westerly, Meniscus and Plumwood Mountain and is studying towards a Masters of Creative Writing at Macquarie University. His first collection of poetry ‘tether’ was published by Recent Work Press in October 2023.
