The Poem of the Month for September 2026, selected by 2026 Anthology editors Elizabeth Salna and Erica Jolly, is For Sylvia by Rosalba Clemente. The commended poems are Ode to an Unsung Life by Veronica Cookson, Invocation by Colleen Lamshed, The Loss by Alan Laslett, and Sanctuary of Sawdust by Kathryn von Bergen.
For Sylvia
Rosalba Clemente
I told you I was troubled
but marriage insisted
though my head was
halfway in the oven.
Don’t complain now
of dirty nappies and
unpaid bills and yes
you’ll have to bring
up the children;
those placid angels we
made whilst you wrote
to accolades and I wrote
the kitchen table
burning fire and ice
my glory grave on paper.
And you promised me love?
Ode to an Unsung Life
Veronica Cookson
Unsung, yet with great survival skills, in scrub
outside town, you wore twisted wire at your waist,
to whip out should a king brown slither too close.
Unsung, with sheer doggedness, no school close by,
you painstakingly taught yourself to read and write,
literacy achieved, letter by letter, slowly, slowly.
Unsung, though a natural talent for nurturing
provided wholesome meals, their goluptious aromas
triggering hunger, with resulting satisfied bellies.
Unsung, but artistry with needle and crochet hook
ensured rose, indigo and golds of fairyland gardens
rioted on tablecloths and sheets. Face washers
and tea-towels sported crochet edges. Local children
clamoured for your stuffed dogs, cats and gollywogs.
Unsung, patient with your knee-controlled Singer,
you crafted double layer paper covers for 78s,
spun on a wind-up HMV. How we kids fought
for our turn to change the stylus after each playing.
Unsung, while an instinctive courage warranted fleeing
your marriage begun at seventeen, turned cruel;
forcing you to rent in the township. Unsung,
pure grit enabled you to cope with unfair gossip
of that later pregnancy, not of those nuptials,
giving birth to our treasured favourite auntie.
Unsung, chutzpah coloured your white hair pink
or ginger, with talons painted take that scarlet.
My Nanna—unsung, much loved.
(Bessie Nora Adelaide Rule
nee Garrett
prev Dobbins
24-12-1904—5-12-1975)
Invocation
Colleen Lamshed
Leave me with my heart
Wide open
To the sky
To the breeze
To the tapestry of leaves
Upon the weedy grass
To the sights and sounds
Of grace, awe, angst and pain.
Leave me with my heart
Wide open
To give, to receive the love needed
In this fragile, ailing world.
Give me a courageous heart
That the legacy I leave is worthy
Of the life given me.
Kindness in a world in chaotic disarray
Where ego, neuroses co-create
To fuel the hungry beast
Rippling, slashing, killing, railing
Against harmony, nurture, Peace.
The Loss
Alan Laslett
A city girl condemned to the Bush,
the isolation and loneliness.
Expecting her first, the fear of birth
and devastating fires haunted her,
She feared the possibility of loss.
‘You’ll be safe here, Mel,’ he assured her
and she believed him
just as she had before the seduction.
Even when the child had come
her days were filled with dread.
It was a foreboding one-hundred-degree Fahrenheit February day.
The north paddock awaited harvest and baling
the grass whipped like a raging ocean swell,
anything loose whirled away, flying torpedoes.
The two roomed cottage,
refuge for intimacy the night before
with its kids’ sleepout exposed to the north
was like the forge in the blacksmith shop
and the ancient fig tree, the only tree,
offered no shade and no respite.
Just after noon the inferno-dread realised.
The ebony smoke ballooned beyond the ridge
whisked across the paddock and house,
the acrid smoke intense and terrifying.
‘I’ll be back for dinner,’ he said.
‘We’ll have this thing out in no time. Hooroo!’
‘I’ll look after us Mum! Don’t worry!’
the optimism of a fourteen-year-old,
a boy assuming an adult’s responsibility.
The holocaust was fierce and unpredictable
like one with an erratic mental illness.
The man, for all his intent, did not come home,
caught somewhere between an oncoming front
and a life-death line he had no choice but cross.
Elsewhere, a young boy on a limestone edged path
that led from the nowhere gate to the welcome home
became disoriented in the enveloping smoky haze.
The cottage and outhouses were consumed
as was a boy’s life in a totally incinerated garden bed.
When travellers pass by the ruin,
they see a derelict fireplace and chimney.
She sees,
a memorial to all that has been lost.
Sanctuary of Sawdust
Kathryn von Bergen
I open the door
sweet scent of sawdust powdering the floor
curled shavings recalling little sister’s ringlets,
father’s capable hands stroking plane on plank
hammering, chiseling, punching nails sitting proud
whistling while shouldering brace-and-bit
The click of a switch
I cover my ears, crouch and watch
wailing bandsaw carving pink-flesh-wood
mortise and tenon joints to frame all those
cupboards, cupboards, cupboards
A complete makeover for Rose Kupke’s kitchen
out with dark shellacked farmhouse wood
time-honoured walls of cream and green,
in with the marvel of marbled laminex
benchtops elegant in cool dove-grey
Cupboard doors agleam
a glossy palette to match her name
the whole room now pink and grey,
I’d never seen anything like it –
a sacrilege it seemed to me at seven
But oh, how she loved it
brushing aside my mother’s envious glance
cloaked in compliments,
the transformation quite the talk
of the Lutheran Ladies’ Guild
Kitchens now are DIY
programmed machine-cut, packaged by robots
flat-pack frustration flung far and wide
quick-fix hopefuls twirl allen keys
in not-so-quiet desperation,
air-taskers hired when relationships flail
Look, we did it ourselves
gleaming white-on-white
our neighbours have the same,
but why this hollow feeling?
My father’s craft in his cosy workshop
obsolete
cupboards made with love
amidst the safe smell of sawdust –
my sanctuary!