Perhaps

She stands by the circle of grey-green water.

A moat surrounding a castle in France

or some distant part of Ireland perhaps.

The painter has been so vague I can make

the location whatever I fancy but not completely

of my own fabrication - her pensiveness,

her solitary walk just ended by the water

dictate a scenery I can’t ignore, a geography

of no known place, except for fleeting thoughts.

And the marbled light that only falls through

a close canopy of wind-blown leaves - as much

a part of her state of mind, a green reflection

of whatever she is thinking? That she can not

meet her lover today? That because of this

place’s absolute beauty, colouring all the rest

of her life grey, she is unwilling to come here

again? The castle, the trees, and the moat

circling forever, only lacking swans to slide past

to show her how to glide on for the rest

of her days - in stateliness. If life were

as easy as that. But in the short time

of her brief soliloquy the green shade has gone.

She must move on. And the frame of my picture

is not wide enough to encompass all I wish.

---

Debbie Robson has been writing poetry since the 1990’s and performed some of her poems on radio, at Sydney poetry events, in the Blue Mountains and more recently as part of the Women of Words project in Newcastle. She also has been privileged in having one of her long poems performed by an actor as part of the Southern Highlands Art Festival.