She Speaks

It will rain again soon, those great ships
of cloud cutting westwards. Crickets

and frogs sing as the wind hastens
through valley and crop, carrying

damp smell, then damp.

—

Flowers have bloomed. It’s not my voice,
she says. Rain is falling everywhere,

there is no place it doesn’t touch.
It beads in her hair. It’s not my voice,

she says.

—

It will rain again soon on the tangled
vines and thatched roofs of the low country.

The whole place sheens with green.

Stars briefly, little rips

in the sky.

—

Years ago, the moon was red, no one knew
why. It was red and it made the space

around it red. Flowers bloomed that year,
the first in ages. People smiled to think about it,

their lips and eyes.

—

It’s not my voice, she says. Stars,
cutting eastwards, or flowers.

The wind pulls fruit from vines, small things
the colors of moons. The insects

are speaking, she says.









Born in 1981, Australian Sam Byfield has been published at home and internationally, most recently in Heat, Famous Reporter, The National Poetry Review, Meridian, The Warwick Review, Cordite and Cha: An Asian Literary Journal. He has published one chapbook (From the Middle Kingdom, Pudding House Press), and his collection Borderlands is forthcoming (Puncher and Wattmann). He has read at the Sydney Writers' Festival and the National Young Writers' Festival, and at events in Beijing and Melbourne.