Alan Gould
Alan Gould is an Australian poet, novelist and essayist. His seventh novel, The Lakewoman, was launched at The 2009 Melbourne Writers’ Festival, and his twelfth volume of poetry, Folk Tunes, has just been published by Salt. Among his many awards, he has won the NSW Premier’s Prize For Poetry (1981), The National Book Council Banjo Prize for Fiction (1992), The Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal For Literature, and The Grace Leven Award for his The Past Completes Me – Selected Poems 1973-2003.
Two At A Café Table
for MG
Gold estuary falling on your shoulder,
what does blonde hair do?
It’s thirty seven Aprils since
I swam in gold with you,
lay close and breathed pine resin in;
we bonked our lunchtimes through,
our syllabus was tongue and groove
and what might nipples do.
Now coffee and our fancy cakes
are lush, but snag our way.
Miraculous how natural
the things we need to say,
to find response aglitter in
the lives that we now reach,
this winter day’s exquisite calm,
this frisson in our speech.
Is it your body’s loveliness,
is it my voice alone,
is it the gesture of a hand
or curve of your facial bone,
that lift us to our form of words
healing as they renew?
How come it took us half a life
to find this rendezvous
and see the gift of person in
the flesh that we once held,
now ADG can be less gauche,
Michelle be more Michelle’d?
Thirty seven years are here
and shoppers stop to stare
where two old lovers incandesce
and golden is the air.