Tuesday Poem: “Out of the blue” by Frankie McMillan
Out of the blue
On a morning when I stare
at small things
like the curve of a spoon
or light on a white rimmed plate
you ring, breathless
with talk of wild pigs,
how they swept down
from the Aorere Hills
on a moonlit night
to ravage your garden –
the winter cabbages
pale roots upended
like ghostly masts.
Once our mother buried
broken china in the ground
blue willow blue willow
now you pick shards from the mud
the lovers, you say, still wave
from the arching bridge.
© Frankie McMillan
from Dressing for the Cannibals (Sudden Valley Press) 2009
Re-published here with permission of the poet.
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Frankie McMillan completed an MA in Creative Writing (with Distinction) from Victoria University’s International Institute of Modern Letters (IIML). Her first short story collection The Bag Lady’s Picnic (Shoal Bay Press, 2001) was described as “dazzling” by the NZ Listener and received widespread critical acclaim. Dressing for the Cannibals is Frankie’s first poetry collection.
I have known Frankie, and her poetry, for a number of years and elements of her work that I particularly enjoy include her subversive humour, keen observation of the world, and acute but compassionate eye for the foibles of human nature. Out of the blue is a vignette that describes a small moment in time, but at the same time captures something much larger, the paradox of life’s impermanence and continuity caught in the same poem. In this sense, it continues the theme of Bassho’s haiku, In the midst of the plain, and Ezra Pound’s short poem, In a Station of the Metro, featured over the past two weeks.
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oh! i love this – so much – the small to the rushing bigness of pigs to the small evocative shard – the hand waving from the blue china, from the past .. so much here – thank you Helen and Frankie…
It’s quite special, isn’t it?
Beautiful control of tone in this poem!
Thanks for posting Frankie’s terrific poem — and it’s good to know her first poetry collection is now out. I remember how well she read at the Madras Cafe readings in Christchurch in 2008.
Ah, MCB 2008 … a vintage year! Frankie’s “Dressing for the Cannibals” came out last year and is a fine collection, but I do particularly like this poem.