Ways to Say Goodbye

Ways to Say Goodbye, released in 2023 ((print, digital) is also available as an audiobook.
More at https://liquidamberpress.com.au/product/ways-to-say-goodbye/

Anne spoke about the process of making the audiobook version of Ways to Say Goodbye at the March 2024 Liquid Amber Press Zoom poetry reading.

Also see Kevin Brophy’s introduction to Ways to Say Goodbye at the Liquid Amber Press Zoom poetry reading in September 2023

Poems from Ways to Say Goodbye

Red Angel

She’s from the country of angels, I could tell,
her shadow behind her like a dark door.
Her hands were cupped as if waiting
to receive a globe, as if she were about to be Atlas
and carry my pain. Hesitant,
but finding me, or at least my shadow, waiting,
she touched my forehead with blessing.
It was some kind of comfort, in an empty church
on a weekday afternoon. No priest she was
and I, no Catholic, had come to light candles.
I’m just on an errand, she said, to buy a red bowl.
I hold, and she empties, my red story of loss
witnessed by birds in the rafters.
Outside as she leaves, her footfall is soundless.

Travelling to My Mother Last Century

I step in a taxi, again. It takes me there fast
cutting the white dotted lines of highway
into miles of silence. Back to my mother
in the ship or the plane
reversing my steps, to see her curve
herself into her pillows, her red walls
her eyes not seeing me but a blur.
My mother calls to me from her place far away
in deep mind, where she has built a tower of knowing.
From her far tower, she can see the white gardens –
her Vita Sackville-West, the lighthouse, waves
still far away enough for her to remain in greenness
to inhabit, to dwell in the green light of Pre-Raphaelites.
She can read the mind of clouds.