November in Sydney started with stinking rain,
minor floods and reports of cars getting stuck

having ploughed through deep water too fast.
Like me. During exams I’d sit drench-legged

and steam over the paper, my glasses fogged.
On the last night my rented room became an arena

for a waterfall as the ceiling collapsed
in an imperfect circle one bucket wide.

You wouldn’t call it a leak, more like a rend
but when the rain stopped I could see the stars

and I thought of you, out of the city
in that green leafy suburb

sipping your mother’s soup,
protected from the rain.

Alison Thompson

 

Alison Thompson lives near Berry, NSW and is a member of the Kitchen Table Poets. She has two chapbooks published: Slow Skipping (PressPress 2008) and In A Day It Changes (PressPress 2018). She won the DPP Byron Bay Writers Festival Poetry prize (2011) and the 2016 Poetry d’Amour Love Poem Contest.

© 2018