Meeting Place

  where the wrought iron shadows    
  lie over the stone floor                         
  the sea rings like a bell                
  
  she listens to the sea in his chapped ear     
  they lie, embraced, their backs to history     
  the sea spins its mirror over their heads                 
  
  as the hill and the houses slide            
  into a chasm of waiting to be something else                     
  a quick grey day of long calling echoes      
  drifts from far faint hills to catch and fade           
  
  the house is smudged with lamps                          
  in a gold skin of light                                                                        
  through the great windows, bright with bottle panes     
  with dusk and firelight wavering low       
  the sky darkens like wet cement.
  
  
  
  Framework for Cento. 
  1–2       Emily Ballou, ‘Definitions for Happiness’ from The Darwin Poems 
  3           David Campbell, ‘Watercolours’
  4–5       Les Murray, ‘Cycling in the Lake Country’
  6           Jennifer Rankin ‘Sea Bundle’
  7–8       Jennifer Compton, ‘Rongotai’
  9–10     Margaret Scott, ‘At the Salmon Ponds’
  11         Robert Gray, ‘Gardenias’
  12         Gwen Harwood, ‘Carnal Knowledge II’
  13         Kenneth Slessor, ‘Nuremburg’
  14         Christopher Brennan, ‘Towards the Source, 30’
  15         Kevin Hart, ‘The Sea Voyage (Bonnard)’