50. Moya Pacey's 'Lilac Bush' - inviting Deb Dawkins into the garden

LILAC BUSH

 

Vincent van Gogh

Saint Remy, 1889

 

Lilacs pungent

as memory

rob me of sky

block my view

of irises, yellow broom

and the narrow path

that leads the way out.

 

At my feet, the day lies stunted

as a daisy —its flower head

white. My senses

stung by invisible bees.

Impossible to penetrate

memory

find its perfect hive.

 

Note: Van Gogh painted the view of the lilac bush from the window of his room at the asylum of St Paul de Mausole in Saint Remy

.

Moya Pacey

Moya Pacey’s third collection, Doggerland (Recent Work Press 2020) was highly commended in

2021 ACT Book of the Year Awards. She is a founding editor of the women’s on-line journal Not Very

Quiet and in 2019, received a Canberra Critics Circle Award, with Sandra Renew, for her influential

work on women’s poetry.