Arrival

We stumble from plane to blending corridors

and clear yellow signs of arrival

processed in a surprising minute

we're clutched from what could be daylight

into a smooth car on the M25.

The switch was too fast

in Africa faces were etched from

the efforts of authority and weather,

here there's the comfort of eiderdown,

pink satin with tiny English flowers.

The transition is gradual: cosy round relations

and warm houses, grass that ripples soft

and green, pale skies which discreetly

remove harsh tones. I sink neck-deep into

a dove-grey bath with bubbly dove-grey oil.

A man speaks of his New Zealand

daughter-in-law as we chat in the French

patisserie in the picture-book village

I thought no-one really lived in.

We eat sausages at the pub gazing out

at fleshy yellow daffodils growing askance.    

__________________________

Bronwyn Rodden is an Australian writer born in Sydney, who has lived in both urban and rural locations, and travelled widely. She has published short fiction and poetry in Australia, the USA and the UK and holds an MA Writing (UTS) and won the Patricia Hackett Prize for Short Fiction. She was awarded an Emerging Writer Grant by the Australia Council for the Arts, a Fellowship to the Writers Cottage at Bundanon and was selected for the Hachette/QWC 2009 manuscript retreat. She was Finalist in the General Fiction Category of the Eric Hoffer Award (US), and longlisted for the Carmel Bird Digital Literary Award 2018. Her work was included in the Scarp/UW New Poets Program, and in the Anthology of International Contemporary Surrealist and Magical Realist Poetry. She was a Finalist in the 2023 Newcastle Poetry Prize (Australia) and her poetry collection ‘Stranded’ was published by Flying Islands Press.