Coconut Slice.

COCONUT SLICE

   Trish Love turned up on the verandah with a coconut slice she said
   it was a coconut slice we wouldn't have known, it was three layers
   of brown stuff

   Dad never thought much of slices he said they were neither a cake
   nor a biscuit give him a good Sally Lunn any day and we didn't know
   Trish we'd only ever seen her rounding up Garth's cattle on a
   motorbike so we wondered what she wanted

   after she came so did others we never said he'd gone but the word
   had got around and they all brought something--cakes with bits of
   burnt date or walnut poking out or split scones with lemon butter
   stuck to Gladwrap or they clutched posies of January geraniums or
   Arum lilies it wasn't even the funeral why were they bringing
   flowers

   Don't you go putting arum lilies on me when I'm dead he said I don't
   want those gloomy old things on my grave he could see them growing
   out the front of Colin's house three clumps holding up the verandah
   heads neon cones climbing out the dark leaves when he was dying all
   he could do was sit there looking at them it was like they couldn't
   wait to get over the road and sit on him

   some of the women stopped there and pulled some out to add to their
   bunch before they got to our house juice dripping down the copy of
   the Bega District News they'd dipped in the water bucket then they
   wrapped foil around that pulled it together with a creased ribbon,
   one someone gave to them when the last person at their house died

   Where will we put all the flowers said Mum, we dragged boxes of
   Vacola jars out red rubber seals melded into their rims stuck the
   geraniums and lilies in there were climbing roses too they shed
   their petals faster than we could dust them away they were the sort
   of roses that scramble over banks or hide the rabbit holes at
   graveyards

   the kelpie got sick of barking at the next lot coming up the bank
   We put their cakes and slices and scones on plates and fed them
   those and they sat spilling coconut crumbs down their fronts talking
   to each other about the drought and other people who had died or
   would die soon and we sat in the kitchen and waited for them to go
   away