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Svetlana Sterlin
‘The Measure’ & ‘Terrace Lookout’
.
The Measuresunglasses mist when i step out of the car
these roads were they always this dark?
do you ever think about
how time chases its own tail
how we’re dominoes in traffic
& does the pool still do nuggets?
this whole hive mind thing
unfamiliar in its familiarity
stop in the roundabout queue let them
accumulate behind you in the warm- up pool
i see only green & yellow meaning
windows waiting is a pastime
like my hair which has been waiting
six years for a trim patient & unchanging
is that a poem? jeez, they let anyone write
poetry these days you need only to wait
teach yourself patience when crossing
pool deck in stride when crossing
the road was it always this dark?
you need only to listen & observe
& pluck the poems out patient
as if they were splinters under skin
Terrace Lookout
this vantage point feels
like a perch not a point
like the cliffside might collapse
beneath our secondhand shoes
& we might have to take flight
above the river / a plane streaks
the clouds & i could count the metres
between us. we’re cast in shadow
luxury apartment building
overlooks the brewery,
the unswimmable river.
i’ve never seen
the bridge from this vantage
perch / never seen the alphabet
in its framework. i think
predictably, of you / laughter
from below / deceptively
domestic noise, scraping
cutlery, clinking glassware.
none of them look up, not one
not once do i suspect that in a few
short years, i’ll be down there
among you / laughing, ordering
a round, thinking the river
doesn’t seem so vast from here.
maybe i could swim across.
this vantage point feels
like a perch not a point
like the cliffside might collapse
beneath our secondhand shoes
& we might have to take flight
above the river / a plane streaks
the clouds & i could count the metres
between us. we’re cast in shadow
luxury apartment building
overlooks the brewery,
the unswimmable river.
i’ve never seen
the bridge from this vantage
perch / never seen the alphabet
in its framework. i think
predictably, of you / laughter
from below / deceptively
domestic noise, scraping
cutlery, clinking glassware.
none of them look up, not one
not once do i suspect that in a few
short years, i’ll be down there
among you / laughing, ordering
a round, thinking the river
doesn’t seem so vast from here.
maybe i could swim across.
Svetlana Sterlin is the author of Helen Anne Bell Poetry Bequest Award winning poetry collection, If Movement Was a Language (Vagabond Press), which was Commended in the 2024 Anne Elder Award. A Meanjin-based swimming coach, she is also the founding editor of swim meet lit mag and writer of (often aquatic) prose, poetry, and screenplays.