Open window
Read the poem, then read the notes at the end of the poem, then read the poem again. That’s if you’ve got nothing else to do all day!
Open window
Saturday night
No one can see me
My street soldier –
a silvery green poplar –
standing sentry
Seeing, unseen
Plump black olives
ready to pluck
from the neighbour’s tree
Charring eggplants, peppers
carried by the breeze
It smells like Sicily:
pungent, sizzling
But I’m in Northcote Point
in a half light
eating salted peanuts
one by one
off a silver teaspoon
Sipping Spanish rosé
Hidden
in my room
Sky changes to dreamy pink
Dog yaps its heart out
Traffic lights at top of street
Blood red, electric green
Phase in, out, and in again
The dark descending
There is no moon
No one can see me
Saturday night
I’m hidden
Huddled
Drinking Spanish rosé
Track 11 Gottan Project
Pulsing in my veins
Better play it again because
track 12
is melancholic
Notes
On the surface this poem is an observational piece, and brings to light the sights, smells and sounds that come in through an open window, things we often miss or are immune to, as we go about our own busy lives.
But it’s about much more than that. As the poem goes on, seducing you with vibrant images of plump olives and sizzling peppers and eggplants, you realize you are being led into someone’s private world and it’s not an entirely wholesome place.
There’s a sense of isolation in that while all this life is swirling around outside, and is seemingly so close, the person writing the poem is not part of it.
There’s sadness, too, because it is Saturday night and the person is alone, and unobserved, filling in the evening with a ritual of slowly eating and drinking.
Then the words and images become more stark (Dog. Yaps. Its. Heart. Out.), and the illumination from the street lights is jarring, as the impending sense of doom increases in the fading evening light.
By the second-to-last stanza the person is no longer sipping wine, but drinking it, and is now ‘huddled’, probably maudlin. The poem then comes to an abrupt end with an unexpected quirky finish.
Very powerful Julie!