Poetry by David Harris
Bubble
All those questions.
The woman is nice enough
But she asks me questions.
Couldn’t answer one.
Here’s another–
‘Do you know where you are?’
At last, success.
‘Of course I know.’
‘I’m here.’
Not ‘In the clinic…’ or ‘In the ambulance…’
but ‘here’.
Beautiful in simplicity
and truth.
‘Here’.
It follows me, surrounds me,
I am in an ever-present wrapping of
‘here’.
It can stretch,
‘where is the cat?’
‘here’ – on the chair beside me,
but not far –
the dog is ‘over there’.
Sometimes you are ‘here’ too –
I feel your presence.
Or you are somewhere else –
outside my ‘here’ bubble.
Sometimes when we’re close
our bubbles coalesce.
I like it when they do.
David Harris is a retired engineer living in Adelaide whose ancestors came from Tipperary. He is an Irish language enthusiast and currently working on translating some of his poems into Irish. You can read more of his poetry at
http://friendlystreetpoets.org.au/poetry/sample-of-poets/david-harris/ and in his book In a Subjunctive Mood, Ginninderra Press, 2017
Tinteán 