Writer and poet Rachel Bush died yesterday. We thank Sport magazine for permission to post one of Rachel’s poems.

A statement from Victoria University Press:

It is with great sadness we learned that our good friend Rachel Bush died yesterday. Rachel was a wonderful poet, an astute reader and a warm supporter of other writers. She will be greatly missed. Our thoughts are with her family and close friends.

Thought Horses, Rachel’s newest collection of poetry, will be published in April. We are so pleased that Rachel was well enough to work on her book with editor Ashleigh Young, and that she also got to see and hold her book.

We will be holding a reading and celebration of Rachel at Vic Books on Tuesday  April 19.

All my feelings would have been of common things

All my feelings are of common things
of the clock going on, of the next
meal or the last one, of the washing
on the line and if there’s enough heat
to dry it, of how to clean a lawnmower
just enough to make the Salvation Army
man want to take it away, with old grey
grass stuck to the blades, the tyres that hold
dirt, like cleats in walking shoes. Also
a dryer I bought forty years ago,
I stick the manual and the expired
guarantee inside the metal drum.
All those clothes it turned and churned, the lint
that it trapped in its door. I once thought
many things would make my life happier
and now one by one I will let them go.

Rachel Bush

Our thanks to Fergus Barrowman for permission to use the poem which first appeared in Sport 44.