Clarence Caddell

Family Reunion

I travelled to meet my children, who were grown

Older than me and full of your opinions. 

My youngest most Socratically dressed me down

While I gazed at a basket of brown onions

From which the sallow life leaked, nutriment

Denied. My eldest wouldn’t speak to me.

Under your bed I showed them what I meant

To be a symbol, but they took it literally 

As comment on your slap-dash housekeeping. 

Your new man spent some effort in the garden

While I remarked that it was not a thing

To win a prize, nor would I ask his pardon,

But held up a tomato, pustular,

Discoloured, just as if it were a flower

And I the Buddha, Mahākāśyapa

My middle child. More sorrowful than sour, 

And unconverted utterly, he went

To fetch the man a beer. Inside the shed

I found a hatchet, on my mission bent,

And started with the bean rows. Green blood bled—

Nay, pissed in gouts. I looked across to see

The gardener, your second Adam, hand

To his gigantic chest, fall, seemingly

From far aloft. Felt my own chest expand. 

Clarence Caddell is editor of The Borough, the sole Australian journal of formal and formal-adjacent poetry. He is working on a second collection, Broken Words, narrating the history of a marriage, its dissolution and sequelae.