Stefanie Bennett- Two Poems

MIDNIGHT TULIPS                   

The Dream Maker stepped out of the haze

Of the ‘sleep empire’. Fathoms below that

Of the Sky Walker; light years above

The Green Giant from

                                   The underground.

The Midnight Tulips he carried gleamed

Like many unheard-of suns. A hand-woven

Rainbow sashed itself about his shoulders

To trail across the frosty land.

All the while his descendants tossed

                                            To his calling.

The children wanted knowledge. Of pirate kings.

Ghouls and goblins, and toad manors, and  

                                                      Missing things.

The ‘elders’? A mixed bag, that lot. They sought

Everything from misplaced Troy, turbo-charged

4-wheel drives – and jewelled superannuation

                                                              Schemes.

He’d been one of them: was ‘at one’ with them.

That had been spelt out and chronicled

                                        Long ago. He’d known

Flood. Famine. The conqueror and

                                          The conquered:

Crystal ships and voyaging angels.

                                               He’d touched

The bold and beautiful Bethlehem Star...

Now, as a life-force only, a projector of myth

And fable, he could do no more than visualize

On how to cure the sick. Help the dead rest. Or,

Create laughter as light, as soft as the sound

Of raindrops on a leaf. However

                                He could have told them:

                                ‘With each dream you die

                                And live a little’.

                                He could have told them:

                                ‘Choice is always

                                A two-way street’.

He could have told them. He could have...

But  The Dream Maker stepped out of the haze

Of the ‘sleep empire’ content to

                                                Just let be.

The Midnight Tulips he carried shone

                                               And sighed.

For some, the ship had

                                    - Come in.

[from Midnight Tulips, ‘The Performance’]

MY GRANDFATHER’S VIOLIN    

I can still hear my grandfather’s violin.

He played as if he’d brought the whole

Of Italy with him –.

He’d been a barrow-boy. He’d sold fruit and

Flowers outside the great concert halls

Of Naples. He’d seen and known Caruso’s

Last performance from the back row.

That concert cost him forty barrow-loads

And nine days of hard selling.

“I’d do it again,” he’d say. “There are

Many apples but too few phenomena.”

I can still hear my grandfather’s violin...

Hauntingly beautiful. Drifting upwards

Like a prayer. Like water trickling

About the flagstones in the back garden.

I see the old photographs hung near

                                            The stairwell.

The pin-stripe suit. The classic spats and hat

That lent ‘a touch of class’. But – more

                                                Than that –,

His kind of tenacity leant on through.

He went as he’d lived. Glib and humorous.

His policy; things are what you make them.

He died, comfortably off. It started

With a barrow full of flowers.

The violin? It... held it all together.

[from the ‘libretto’, Midnight Tulips]

Stefanie Bennett has published several books of poetry, a novel, and a libretto. Her

poems have also appeared in Carcinogenic Poetry, VerseWrights, Provo Canyon

Review, Record-Magazine, The Galway Review, Illya’s Honey, Shot Glass Journal,

IS&T, The Mind[less] Muse and others. Of mixed ancestry [Italian/Irish/Paugussett-

Shawnee], she was born in Townsville, Queensland, Australia in 1945