Tric O'Heare
POET WRITER TEACHER
Poems
Full texts of several selected poems from O'Heare's latest book, Marrow
Madonna of the Dry CountryBe a Snake AgainCorrespondence, Saint Patrick's DayPhillip Island, 1972
Madonna of the Dry CountryBe a Snake AgainCorrespondence, Saint Patrick's DayPhillip Island, 1972
Madonna of the Dry Country
Madonna of the Dry County was awarded second place in the W B Yeats Poetry Prize for Australia and New Zealand 2001. It was published in Tender Hammers, Tric O'Heare (Five Islands Press, 2003), anthologised in Motherlode, Australian Women's Poetry 1986-2008, Jennifer Harrison (ed) and Kate Waterhouse (ed), and is discussed in Jane Petkovic's Body-Poetics of the Virgin Mary: Mary’s Maternal Body as Poem of the Father (Pickwick Publications, 2021).
This timethey’ve put Mary in a 44-gallon drumhacked down the middleA tabernacle of galvanized ribsto hold her in
She tells herself she has perfect balanceThe world’s a chipped beach ballstill under her gripping marble feetHere in a backyard reclaimed from desertshe crushes the snake without looking down
When the faithful come, she seesher ancient son hologrammed in their eyes,one minute baby, the next a corpse,and remembers the knowing bratwith the future encoded in his blood
Every year has a shooting seasonwhen, tiring of ducks, men shoot at herbecause she is there and once was beautifulTheir bullets have sheared away breasts,nose, lips, elbow, the arch in her neck
Pared back to a suggestion in the rock,she recites her own rosaryand prays her son will truly come backto release her from a mantlethat webs her arms to her sides
Often she dreams he has come backand is holding her in his torn and bloodied armsBut when dawn comes, working dogsstretch awake and test their chainsShe knows simply the story’s not yet done
Some days she just weepsPeople hurry down roadsin plumes of dustto be sobered or curedby the sight of mute woman crying
Touched by their simplicityshe invokes her wayward sonto do somethingMary’s thoughts are luminousbut her tongue is tethered
They have put her in a hard placethis time
She tells herself she has perfect balanceThe world’s a chipped beach ballstill under her gripping marble feetHere in a backyard reclaimed from desertshe crushes the snake without looking down
When the faithful come, she seesher ancient son hologrammed in their eyes,one minute baby, the next a corpse,and remembers the knowing bratwith the future encoded in his blood
Every year has a shooting seasonwhen, tiring of ducks, men shoot at herbecause she is there and once was beautifulTheir bullets have sheared away breasts,nose, lips, elbow, the arch in her neck
Pared back to a suggestion in the rock,she recites her own rosaryand prays her son will truly come backto release her from a mantlethat webs her arms to her sides
Often she dreams he has come backand is holding her in his torn and bloodied armsBut when dawn comes, working dogsstretch awake and test their chainsShe knows simply the story’s not yet done
Some days she just weepsPeople hurry down roadsin plumes of dustto be sobered or curedby the sight of mute woman crying
Touched by their simplicityshe invokes her wayward sonto do somethingMary’s thoughts are luminousbut her tongue is tethered
They have put her in a hard placethis time
Be a Snake Again
Be a Snake Again was first published in the Australian Poetry Journal vol. 6 no.1 2016.
To be dirtand stone before she wakes upTo unthread herselffrom her hole in the hillwith her head leading the way out of the darkTo feel sun press along her zip of bonesTo pass a skinlying like last summer’s filigree of that selfTo stretch outon the dirt road’s haunch just to take in its warmthTo move offso as not to become a necklace for a postTo find the lensof water she can senseTo drinkso that she can be a snake again
Correspondence, Saint Patrick’s Day
In memoriam Rosemary Nelson (1)
Correspondence with the Irish Relatives won Australian Irish Heritage Association Poetry Prize 1999 and was first published in Tender Hammers, Tric O'Heare (Five Islands Press, 2003).
Armagh’s rain has dimpledyour cloudy envelopeI can almost smell it, soft,as my hands shake creasesfrom your news
My Christmas parcel to you was sealedwith Melbourne’s summer sweatand I have often thought of youas our summer leaches outthrough autumn,easing the flaps of paper apartwith the bread knife tapered by lifetimes of carving
I had wanted to give you something of the summer just gonesketched children’s rubber solesmelting on our perspiring roads,told how we’d call shut the dooreach time we heard a creakas if our houses could offermore than an illusion of cool
You mention keeping your childrenhome from school a lot this winter,fearing guns, bombs, neighboursTonight I reply to youin the semaphore of wordsTwo women on land’s edgeSignaling across years of ocean
I will want you to knowI have planted sweet pea today (2)in the powdery slownessof our autumn duskCeremonially wishingeach green thread luckagainst the dumb violence of snails
Thinking of you all the while, You, who garden blindly thereneck strained against familiar soundsand the incalculable speedof darkness (1) Rosemary Nelson, a human rights lawyer, was assassinated in County Armagh, Northern Ireland, on 15 March 1999 while representing the Catholic Garvaghy Road Residents Coalition in its objection to the Orange Order march through the area. (2) By tradition, sweet pea are planted on Saint Patrick’s Day in Victoria, Australia.
My Christmas parcel to you was sealedwith Melbourne’s summer sweatand I have often thought of youas our summer leaches outthrough autumn,easing the flaps of paper apartwith the bread knife tapered by lifetimes of carving
I had wanted to give you something of the summer just gonesketched children’s rubber solesmelting on our perspiring roads,told how we’d call shut the dooreach time we heard a creakas if our houses could offermore than an illusion of cool
You mention keeping your childrenhome from school a lot this winter,fearing guns, bombs, neighboursTonight I reply to youin the semaphore of wordsTwo women on land’s edgeSignaling across years of ocean
I will want you to knowI have planted sweet pea today (2)in the powdery slownessof our autumn duskCeremonially wishingeach green thread luckagainst the dumb violence of snails
Thinking of you all the while, You, who garden blindly thereneck strained against familiar soundsand the incalculable speedof darkness (1) Rosemary Nelson, a human rights lawyer, was assassinated in County Armagh, Northern Ireland, on 15 March 1999 while representing the Catholic Garvaghy Road Residents Coalition in its objection to the Orange Order march through the area. (2) By tradition, sweet pea are planted on Saint Patrick’s Day in Victoria, Australia.
Phillip Island, 1972
For Robbie
Phillip Island, 1972 was first published in The Best Australian Poems, 2014.
There’s always a girl, girls want to be like.The one their mothers know won’t make it.The one who outswims Woolamai’s rips.Whose hair is golden even when it’s wetas a drowned girl’s. Who at a picnic holdsa pea to the sun, to show its green pearliness.Who beckons Saturday night and who greetsSunday morning with one hand on her hiplike a bored cowgirl. In the packed pool hall,her left hand splayed under the billiard cueis a night’s fulcrum. She’s watched - but notlike a ballerina is watched. She’s no oracle.For her, the ferries leaving for the mainland,mutton birds coming in like dusk, are bothjust sticking to timetables. When autumnstorms start to threaten February’s hot skies,she’ll run the island infinite beach in bikinisand a towelling coronet. She’ll hold her armsout like a human kite, willing the windto take her. Just because it feels so good,not because she knows – how can she know? –she’s a girl destined to only have the summer.