by JAYA PENELOPE
For my great-great grandmother Catherine Tobin
Everything falters under the fierce light
as you step blinking from the belly
of the frigate, your hopes folded
tight among the threadbare
dresses in the weathered trunk
you clutch between raw palms.
Burrs hitch rides in your skirt-hem
seeds from alien trees spike collar
and cuff, twigs rake tendrils of hair
from your bun. The lace of your collar
sighs like foam on The Irish Sea.
You travel south, find a husband
from your hometown. He builds
you a house of mud bucketed from the banks
of a river you do not know the name of.
You birth four sons, labour
to pull roses, cabbages
out of sparse soil, only your boys
thrive, become founding fathers
of this new town, you fade
to sepia, a footnote.
But none of these things unstitch
you. It is that the butter melts, the milk
curdles and you do not know what
to offer to the fair folk of this land
Though in your dreams
the nameless river is calling, calling
calling you home
Catherine Tobin, an Irish immigrant, arrived in Fremantle from Ireland on the frigate “Robert Morrison” in 1866. She married James Kearney, a Fenian convict, and had four children in the town of Nannup in southwest Australia.