Roses should be chosen for smell

(for Dave, on our 10th wedding anniversary)

Roses should be chosen for smell:

not the sugar-pink smell of generic romance;

not the faint stale smell of petrol,
still lingering on the petals from the servo
where they were bought as an afterthought
on the way home;

not the whiff of guilt
seeping through their weak attempts
to propitiate...

No: roses should smell of
whispered conversations in the dark,
long after the lights have been turned out;

walks to and fro between home and the train station,
framing the day's labours;

newsprint and coffee on a Saturday morning;

a flickering screen
watched with knotted fingers,
waiting for a glimpse of a heartbeat;

summer nights spent
desperately passing a screaming newborn
back and forth, back and forth
in time with the tennis on the TV.

Roses should smell of a
first date
first kiss
first flat
first loss

and every second and third and fourth,
from then till now,
encoded in the scent of each petal.

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Bathurst

My sister,
we were always
so different
from each other -
'Chalk and cheese'
mum would say.

But we share a childhood,
our shaping years,
spent side by side in the back seat,
on the first stages of the journey.

And now you're leaving.
God has flung you somewhere new.
Soon the last box will be sealed,
the truck doors will slam shut,
and you'll drive back
to where it all began -

Back to that cold, beautiful town,
where Autumn covers the parks
with a carpet of orange
and the taps freeze in winter;
back to where God first drew our family to him,
one by one,
slowly chipping away at mum,
melting dad's resistance in one morning.

And now you're driving back
with your own little family,
for God to use you,
in the chipping and melting work
that he has planned for many hearts.

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