This one uses the rhyme words from David Malouf ‘s ‘La Belle Hélène’, which I wrote about yesterday. It’s not the Onegin stanza rhyme scheme – sorry!
November verse 12:
It's been a while since we've seen midnight
or, naked-eyed, pushed thread through needle,
decades since you've been a girl
or I a boy. No half-sane poet
would write of us as bête and belle,
yet here we are, alive, awake,
no cancer, heart attack or stroke
to force the point we're not immortal.
Though, always seeming as innocuous
as phoenix embers in the hearth,
these fleeting memories of youth –
when I had painless knees, and you
no back complaining when you rose –
hint darkly at what looms tomorrow.
Me fail? I fly! 
Dear Jonathan, I am deeply involved in organising my mother’s funeral in Dubbo and every day there is the treasure of finding your latest poem. Thank you. Libby
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Hi Libby. I’m sorry you’re having to do that, but glad you’re not alone with it – and very glad my little efforts can provide something
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Not just the pleasure of your latest poem but now a whole collection – or at least book 4. It was lovely to find this in our stash of mail when back from a month’s retreat in the cool hilltop west of the Sunshine Coast.
Especially the poems about moving house made me feel nervous about trying the same. And I really loved Yes,Today. That’s one for Amy and Sophie. (My daughter and Daughter in Law.)
Many thanks. Libby
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I’m glad you’ve enjoyed the book, Libby. I discovered after writing Yes, Today that I’d been beaten to it by any number of people, but I did my bit!
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