Two Poems by Anthony Lawrence

Strawberries

I was driving home in the rain with a busted headlight 
and a piece of my side missing. 
The letter I found on the kitchen table
had ended with an ink spill, not a signature. 

A strawberry stall loomed from the dark. 
I pulled over and ordered two punnets.
I’m sorry, the man said. I’ve only these
end-of-season cherries and a jar of honeycomb.

Maybe next time, I said. I’ll be here, he replied.
Driving, her letter fluttered on the back seat 
like a bird I’d hit and was taking home
with no idea about what to do, once I got there.

Octopus

Having knocked the lid from the cooler
it roped out onto the jetty 
to confer with knots in stained timber
as to which direction lay water

and which the dead heart of overexposure.
Despite knowing how survival and escape were one
in its drive to return to the sea
I cut its path to freedom off

at the ladders of its arms and the diving bell of its head.
By the ink on my hands
and the light on its skin going out
like the bulb of a lantern in the rain

regret surfaced then turned to shame when I saw
how many puzzles it had needed to solve
with no black cloud to seed and use for cover
no stone or shell to borrow for its life.

Anthony Lawrence has published nineteen collections of poems and a novel. His work has been published in Poetry Review, PN Review, The London Magazine, and has won a number of awards, including the Australian Prime Minister‘s Award for Poetry, the Ginkgo prize, the Gregory O’Donohue poetry prize and the Philip Hodgins Medal. He lives on Moreton Bay, Queensland.