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He showed me how to swing a hammer, the right grip in the right place on the handle. I thank him again in my mind, every time I hammer a nail or a tent peg in. It must have been 1992; then he was twenty-three.

He was fifteen the time I turned from outfacing an abusive tradesman on the doorstep, and found him right behind me, ready in case I needed help.

After my huge, beautiful dog died, he channelled him for me one night on the phone. It was unexpected and a strain, but he stuck with it. I don’t know if that ever happened for him again. The message was good, and true. I was grateful.

He was just a kid, maybe ten, that night when his dad was away. He heard footsteps, furtive, down the path next to the house. A torch flashed briefly outside his bedroom window. “Dad!” he yelled, thinking fast (more deterrent than “Mum!”). I switched on lights and stomped loudly. The intruder ran. We heard him scrabble over the back fence, just as sudden rain came pelting, drenching down.

I remember him walking with me to the shops, chatting of this and that, nearly as tall as I was, casually hand in hand; how happy it made me feel.

Broader and taller by inches, coming off the plane after his student months in New York State. A cowboy hat and an Indian feather – a great honour, he said. His brother and two of his mates bursting in later on his jetlag sleep, grinning. “G’day, Yank!”

He finished renovating his father’s house after his father died. He went to Pam’s house too, to complete what his dad started there to help our friends. That didn’t last; he got kicked out. Gets kicked out of lots of places – even, at last, mine.

Visited his cousin Ellie last time he was home, and his Uncle Robert, the brother his father disliked. Both were glad; needed that family feeling he gave them then, so he said. Maybe he needed it too.

Adventurous always, on our journey towards Ayers Rock he declared, “I’m a born mountain climber.” He was eight; we smiled. He was a born mountain climber – soon out of sight of the rest of us struggling towards the top. He ran up the Rock! No use worrying for his safety; it was out of my hands.

Now too, his fate is out of my hands. He is moving, he says, towards his own truth, his own discovery of love. The final repudiation of Mother, the final claiming of self. So mote it be.


19/10-3/11/09

Tanka on Tuesday: October 2009

 4/10/09
   
dragonfly's wings flap
causing storms across the world
they'd have us believe
internet's even faster
is this chaos or theory?


6/10/09

warm day already
the grey cat curled on my bed
stretches out purring
I decide to stay longer
stroke her and open my book


13/10/09

From the low vantage
above the storm-damaged beach
the sea, my old love,
lately appears unfriendly
surging in rougher, closer.

**********************

Orion

The sky warrior’s
belt and sword are clear to see
turned upside-down –
the friendly southern image
a domestic cooking pot.


14/10/09 See Climate Change Tanka (previous post)


20/10/09

Those smiling snapshots
chubby tot, eager young man
are from long ago.
Now he glowers from photos.
The child in my mind is gone.


27/10/09

after the thunder
a return to calm sunlight
I’m dazed and blinking
thinking of a troubled man
who may never find such peace

Climate Change Tanka

(Reposted from Tanka on Tuesday, for Blog Action Day)

From the low vantage
above the storm-damaged beach
the sea, my old love,
lately appears unfriendly
surging in rougher, closer.

*************************

And two from my side of a debate in verse with a friend who says global warming is false, the earth's been cooling since 1998, and it's a ploy to raise global taxes for the New World Order:

Here in my country
recent years have exceeded
1998
with greater extremes of heat –
but I don't know what this proves.


Warming or cooling,
new world order or new tax,
on this we agree:
our politicians' motives
are seldom to be trusted.

Tanka on Tuesday: September 2009

Reposted from MySpace


1/9/09

First of September.
A voice in my dream cries “Wake!”
A dead branch hits the garden
fallen from the palm,
flagging another summer
littered with falling branches.

***************************

sleeping underground
is the safest for wombats
we pray they don’t try
a path across the highway
and turn up their toes, skittled


8/9/09

Close, he looks nervous;
closer, secretly amused.
My smile looks happy,
reflections obscure my eyes.
Body language? We look close!

(See here.)


15/9/09

in September sun
as new leaves and buds glisten
my friend telephones
her dying father’s lucid
they have had a lovely day


22/9/09

it’s Spring Equinox
here in the South of the world
a time of balance
between the light and the dark
then new life starts as light grows

*************************

sunshine and thunder
wind and the smell of new rain
from a warm blue sky
and the blind vine thrusting up
seeking light and sustenance

***********************

only three this year
gathering for Eostre
from the old coven
lighting the wishing candle
surrounded by Archangels

Stormbringer, LightStar
and DragonStar (Queen of Wands)
joined hands round the light
and remembered the others
feeling their spirits present

a sky high and blue
a spreading mulberry tree
dripping with ripe fruit
our hands stained with juice like blood
symbol of death and bright life


24/9/09

TELL THAT TO THE MALDIVES
A response to a friend who claimed climate change is a lie,
as rivers pouring into the sea don’t cause its level to rise.

There is a balance.
Rivers and rain enter, then
evaporation.
But when icebergs keep melting
small Pacific islands drown.

**********************

A fresh Spring morning
yesterday’s choking dust cloud
vanished from this coast –
to infiltrate the ocean
or arrive in New Zealand?


29/9/09

with sunshine outside
long hours at my computer
it’s my life story
before computers long hours
thumping my old typewriter

Sevenling (Orchids and clover)

30 Poems in 30 Days: Day 30
Write a poem about the end of something.

You can find out about sevenlings here.

Orchids and clover hung from pots
on the outside wall of his house,
and that strange white night-blooming flower.

The stars were out, shining clearly,
and moonlight vied with lamplight,
illuminating his hanging garden faintly.…

When he moved away, he took not one plant.

LOLcats Morning

30 Poems in 30 Days: Day 29
Write a poem that gets shorter with each line.

Levi+Freya iz fatcats, greedeecats
alwiz pretends 2 b needeecats.
Hates numeat, roomeat,
doezn’t smell b4 eat.
Roomeat woz off
peepl sez Pew!
Levi+Freya
4 bigspew
can haz
carpet
yet.

Stillness

30 Poems in 30 Days: Day 28
Pick two or three words from [For the Dean by Peter Wild] and use them to start your poem.

My words are "with great stillness" – and the content is not to be read as autobiography, lol!

With great stillness
I sit in my house by the sea,
the always moving sea
roaring at night its threats
to encroach further.

With great stillness
I stand on the cliff to watch
as wind-swept waves
come thundering, yellow
as if carrying sickness.

And the man is far away
with the last of my money.
And the timbers creak
and the eaves rattle
as a storm approaches.

An old woman
with nowhere to go
I wrap my shawl tighter,
send the hungry cats out to hunt
and await the Great Stillness.