Remembering Dorothy Porter

THE BEE HUT

By Dorothy Porter
(published by Black Inc, 2009)

LUCKY

For Andy

There's a damp melancholy
in T'ang poetry
that smudges
the lovely
jade precision.

I love Walt Whitman's
spunky company
but under his bardic
whistling
I can hear his lonely heart
howling
at the turned back
of some deaf rough trade.

So many poets
starve
in the cold faery spaces
between their frost-bitten ears.

How lucky I am
to hear you, darling,
coming up the stairs
to smell the coffee
floating ahead of you
like my favourite incense.

Dorothy Porter 1954 - 2009

From Literary Melbourne
Edited by Stephen Grimwade
Published by Hardie Grant Books
August 2009

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