Hot in Australia: haiku and things for December 2008

5/12/08

Christmas is coming.
It’s hot in Australia,
swimming weather – yay!

(I think we better call this one a senryu.)
A friend commented:

There is a word for people who talk about heat & swimming weather while it is snowing here in Colorado -- but I don't think that word is "senryu." (-:


12/12/08

Morning dark and damp.
I contemplate stormy clouds
and turbulent creek.

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

In the flood of love
my heart naturally turns
to joyous haiku.


19/12/08

Christmas looms closer,
storms and heat mere irritants
in lead-up frenzy.


20/12/08

In our warm weather
I gaze at pictures of snow –
admire, don’t envy.

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

Is it gift or wage
if you must be a good child
for Santa to come?


23/12/08

No longer looming,
Christmas is here. May it bring
peace and joy to all!


26/12/08

Christmas is over:
two days of festivity
in a busy year.

Losing track of days
in a welter of feasting,
I forget haiku!


28/12/08

The dark of the moon
a soft steady rain falling.
I write to my son.

In the top!

Many thanks to all who have voted for me in the Top 100 Poetry Blogs thing. :)

I was one of the finalists and will have work in the forthcoming anthology. (Which I'll let you know about in due course.)

The idea is not so much the competition, it's to get more people reading more poetry – still, it's rather nice all the same to find my work so highly rated!

The poem of the dress

This recent photo is getting me so many compliments, I decided to revisit a poem I wrote about it in 2007. (On that occasion I was wearing it without the matching trousers.)

Summer dress

My cherry-red drapes me loosely,
floats when I move, dances with me.
Deep armholes show flashes of skin,
my underwear is "nude".

The slit front and scalloped sides
free my winter-white legs.
They stick right out in the sun,
they jig and twist and stride.


20/9/07

After the Spring rains: haiku and things for November 2008

2/11/08

(In response to someone who insisted Beltane is May, Samhain November.)

The night of the dead
marks the turning of seasons
summer to winter.

The fire festival
marks an ascendance of sun
as life is renewed.

Here we're moving now
into the last phase of Spring.
Autumn's end is May.

The wheel is turning
over and over again
this way and that way

your way and my way
the way of the world's turning
its polarities.

The veils thin and part.
Always there will be dying
somewhere, and new birth.


4/11/08

Bird of Paradise Flower

poised in my garden
as if ready to take wing
and enter the light


5/11/08

5th November 2008

As the new day dawns
there are bells, there is singing.
The world takes a breath.


9/11/08

Early November.
Sudden eruptions of rain
turning hot days cold.


10/11/08

True stories

I dream new learning
training as a Samurai
then wake stiff and sore.


The wind howls all night.
Earlier that mighty voice
blasted down both gates.


13/11/08

Again the wind howls
after a day of hard rain.
Clouds cover the moon.


14/11/08

The full moon that rose
bright above the estuary
is now behind clouds.

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

Huge gardenias
round and white as the full moon
sweeten my birthday.


18/11/08

The same view

Across the world
your water birds in flight
skim my river.

(Response to a haiga by Deborah P. Kolodji, USA.)

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

Wild, wet, windy, cold.
Where is the Spring we enjoyed
just one week ago?

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

Reflections of trees
edging the wet black roadway
move too, as I walk.


21/11/08

After the rainstorms
morning is full of pigeons,
insistent cooing.


28/11/08

After the Spring rains
wet grass dotted with clover,
the smells of childhood.


29/11/08

Wind on the paddocks
moves in a wave through the grass:
an inland ocean.

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

Knee-high again,
the recently-mown lawn –
Spring rain-storms.

Editorial aside: number change

On 12 November my age changed to 69 – giving me one more word to play with in these pieces. *Smile.*

Frida Kahlo

I envisaged her with gardenias in her hair
like those over there on the coffee table,
big splashes of white, and that scent.
‘I think of Billie Holliday,’
said the friend who gave them to me.
‘She always wore one in her hair.’

True, but I thought of Frida,
of whom it is not, apparently, true.
I search her self-portraits. She wore
yellow flowers – daisies
and perhaps chrysanthemums –
and red roses. Seldom white;
and when, I couldn’t tell what kind.

So I look instead at her face
knowing of course the tales,
her life of pain and turmoil
and passion, and most of all love.
I gaze at her expression,
uncompromising,
and the set of her head.
Such dignity! She never smiles.

5/11/08

Submitted 7 March 2014 for Poets United's Midweek Motif: Honouring women and women's achievements. (I guess this honours her obliquely, not spelling it right out.)

Heading for the sky: haiku and things for October 2008

3/10/08

Gone with September
those rainstorms and hard, cold winds.
October hots up.

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

The Wheel of the Year
keeps turning, as the world turns.
The seasons rotate.

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

Down here, Down Under,
we complement, not mirror.
A parallel world!

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

Today in Pottsville
in an absence of traffic
and a flood of sun
the village is somnolent
as backroad afternoons.

(Note: I'm indebted to 'Lady Madelyn', who posts to Haiku on Friday at MySpace, for the phrase 'backroad afternoons'.)


10/10/08

Sky covered in grey.
The only colour I see,
my stained glass window.


11/10/08

Neat hair and beard now,
replacing straggly dreadlocks.
My friend goes to court.


14/10/08

Clouds cover the sky
on the night of the full moon.
Spring rain falls softly.


15/10/08

The sky is clouded.
There is a full moon tonight
that I'll never see.


17/10/08

A flash of bright green.
The first lorikeet of spring
surprises the air.

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

rainbow lorikeets
colours of autumn leaves, sky
green, red, yellow, blue.

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

Maple Vine

Red leaves climb a trunk
reaching past the tips of pines,
heading for the sky.


18/10/08

Green spider orchid.
I used to make that essence
helped by the devas
and guided by the Divine.
(It was for divination.)


24/10/08

Spring in the tropics.
The avocadoes ripen,
my wind chime sings loud.

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

My mother’s birthday.
Ten years and more since she died
but I don’t forget.

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

I sat by her bed
holding her hand till the end,
reluctant to know.

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

Ah, once they have crossed,
people love more freely:
no inhibitions!

I'm a medium.
It moves me to tears always,
that unfettered love.

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

We give them poems.
Our way to honour the dead
who gave us our lives.


26/10/08

Basil garden

As we come closer
it rises to our nostrils,
that savoury scent.


31/10/08

Samhain

The moon's a sliver.
The ancestors and others
return through darkness.


Beltaine

We breathe together
lighting an etheric fire ...
leap together, fly.

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

Summer approaches.
Wind and surf sing together.
The trees are dancing.

Long dark road: haiku and things for September 2008

3/9/08

Young and poor, I found
an orange in the gutter
shining like the sun.


5/9/08

Spring begins with rain
falling on land and ocean
with a hushed white roar.

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

The hurricane wind
reaches across the world
smelling of fear.

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

When my son was here
he never saw these moments,
our small shared laughters.
The fact of an observer
changes what’s being observed.


6/9/08

This morning is bright
as if washed after the rain,
the picture refreshed.

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

For Haiku on Friday (MySpace)

In my time of dark,
in another hemisphere
my friends make poems.

I waken to find
here from all over the world
this feast of haiku!


12/9/08

Sept. 11

The burning towers
bloomed across my TV screen
and the world was changed.


19/9/08

Long dark road.
My friend's chest pain is intense.
The drive seems endless.

As I bring him home
after the operation
small birds are singing.


26/9/08

In the morning sun
red leaves outside my back door
glow, pointing upward.


28/9/08

Haiku and moonlight.
Leaves turning with the seasons
as dreaming begins.

Autobiographical Poem Format #2

I am ____
I wonder____
I hear____
I see _____
I want ____
I am (same as first line)
I pretend ____
I feel ____
I touch ____
I worry ____
I cry ___-
I am (same as first line)
I understand ___-
I say ____
I dream ____
I try ____
I hope ____
I am (same as first line)

---------------------------

I am alive in the world.
I wonder at this great blessing.
I hear many complain,
I see there is hardship and suffering, and
I want to help relieve that; but I am thrilled by life.

I am alive in the world.
I pretend to be just like everyone else.
I feel, though, exhilarated merely to exist.
I touch trees, flowers, stones, flowing water.
I worry about the survival of this beautiful planet.
I cry if a tree or animal dies – yet I kill some insects.

I am alive in the world.
I understand only that life is a miracle.
I say this out loud very seldom, as few can hear.
I dream of a time when we’re all rejoicing;
I try to lift the spirits of those I touch.
I hope for a time to come when all proclaim with joy:
‘I am alive in the world!’

Autobiographical Poem Format #1:

Line 1: First name only (screen names are fine)
Line 2: Four adjectives that describe you
Line 3: Son/daughter of __
Line 4: Lover of __ (name three things - phrases work best)
Line 5: Who feels __ (name three - phrases work best)

In the following sections, the writer may name as many as they like.
Line 6: Who finds happiness in __
Line 7: Who needs __
Line 8: Who gives __
Line 9: Who fears __
Line 10: Who believes __
Line 11: Who would like to see __
Line 12:Who enjoys __
Line 13: Who likes to wear __
Line 14: Resident of __

Line 15: Last name only (screen names are fine)

-------------------------------------------------------
Rosemary –

didactic, wise, magickal, ripe
daughter of Oswald and Helen,
lover of bitter dark chocolate,
the blues and the poetry of Yeats,
who feels irritated by too much chatter,
thrilled when contemplating the ocean,
and delighted by really good haiku,

who finds happiness in the love of like minds,
who needs great gobs of solitude every day,
who gives psychic readings that are locally famous,
who fears appearing ridiculous but risks it anyway,
who believes in the power of the human mind,
who would like to see the Andes again, up close,
who enjoys fantasy in print or on screen,
who likes to wear black and purple,
resident of the Mt Warning Caldera
in far northern New South Wales, Australia 

– Nissen-Wade

The Quest

Prompt: Write a poem that's a parable. I'm cheating on this one, being pushed for time, and using a poem written some little time ago.

I looked for you all my life,
found you in many places.
I lusted after your beauty,
saw it in many faces.

But each illusion faded
as the world continued turning.
The days drew on to sunset.
I saw the horizon burning.

'That's fine,' I said to The Mother,
'If that is how it must be.
This journey into sorrow
has held much joy for me.

'I thank you for the pleasures
and for the lessons learned.'
And I prayed for a spirit companion
while still the horizon burned.

I travelled across the horizon,
plunging into the dark.
There was no ground beneath me.
Ocean and sky turned black.

Sunrise flames on a new world,
a horizon flooded with light.
All names and faces merge as one,
and I sing on my forward flight.

14/5/08

Happy Birthday

Prompt: a poem about a painful experience or one involving some other emotion, without stating the emotion. I've written enough pain poems this year to last a lifetime! So this isn't.

On your very first birthday
what did I give you,
knowing I gave?

A long journey
twelve hours, exhausting.
The briefest touch of my arms.

And instant recognition:
you could only be mine,
with those family features.

I gave you
a mother too tired
to hold you long that first time,

one who couldn’t feed you,
but could later cuddle, talk to you, rock
once we got the bottle right.

Much later I discovered
other things I gave you
from the first –

a love of poetry
and the gift to write it
from my Dad and his Dad and me

and music, not from
but through me,
one of my mother’s talents.

Now you’re 41
in just a few days.
I can’t believe it.

It’s hard to know what
I might give you this birthday.
Usually I don’t, just a call

or an email. We always say
we don’t need words –
we who love them.

And these days it’s you
who finds gifts for me,
nearly always a perfect book.


"Happy Birthday" is the Midweek Motif prompt at Poets United for 19 March 2014.  This seems a perfect piece to submit!

Money Blues

Prompt: Write a blues sonnet

Money’s getting scarcer by the day
money’s getting scarcer ev’ry day
I’m juggling bills, there’s always more to pay.

I think this week I’ll manage and we’ll eat
this week I think I’ll manage, we will eat
but then they raise the rent, we’re on the street.

We don’t know where the next cent’s coming from
we don’t know where the next meal’s coming from
we don’t know where to find another home.

I used to have a cat I couldn’t feed
I used to have a cat I didn’t need
I gave him to a friend who could afford

such luxuries as roof and food and pet.
I don’t know how much lower I can get.

(Slightly exaggerated, don't worry - I would NEVER give away my two beautiful cats!)

Editorial Aside

Posting here less often just now, while doing the 30 Poems in 30 Days challenge at Writer's Resource Center.

Departure

Anyway I, missing the boat, did not drown
thrashing wildly, nor did I turn in anger
striding up the pier and away. I only
waved as if calmly.

Spring is now beginning to rain on all things,
wetting even oceans and rivers, lakes too.
Only I’m not adding to all this water;
I am not crying.

You can sail away on your ship to elsewhere.
You can leave today or (I can’t remember)
was it really yesterday when we parted?
See – I forget now!

When the years are thundering slowly, heartbeats
drumming heavy down throughout time, through my time,
surely no pulse echoes to your blood rhythm,
nor will I dream you.

The prompt was to write in metre, preferably one we didn't often use. This is my attempt at Sapphic metre. (The addressee is fictional, or perhaps composite.)

A poem about finding something

(Last Wednesday's prompt from Poetic Asides)

Young and poor, I found
an orange in the gutter
shining like the sun.

What Object Is This?

Prompt: Write a poem that includes at least one description of an object that is six or more words long. Mine's a sort of riddle poem.

I play with it at night.
It keeps my hands occupied,
demands concentration
yet helps me relax.

Not what you’d call
glamorous to look at
but it can excite me,
more so when hard.

It’s longer than six;
I'm glad of that.
And there’s no anger
though the words are cross.

Later: OK, everyone seems to have guessed – as intended; while understanding the innuendo also – as intended. So I should probably call it a joke rather than a riddle.

Mater Familias

30 Poems in 30 Days is back this September at Writer's Resource Center aka PoeWar. The prompt for Day 1 was to write about something one believes.

I believe in One God
who has many names and faces
and more genders than we
here on this tiny planet
could possibly imagine.
And I like to call Her Goddess.

Sometimes I call Her Mother.
But that can get confusing.
Since her death, my own Mum
tends to come at the call –
quite kindly, and pleased I think
that finally I seem to need her.

Or I call Her the Universe
encompassing all
that vastness, limitless,
as well as the most minute
invisible particle, and
even the nothing between.

The Universe. Isn't that 'It'?
Abstract, non-gender-specific?
Perhaps. But also I see
that space, that profound dark
as the Void, the Great Womb,
the Nurturer of Life.

I like the horned deer in the forest,
male symbol of God, the stag.
I like the great image of Pan
as the kindly sprit of Nature
animating our world. So I’m not
committed to calling that Gaia.

I believe really that God
is everything we are,
our whole reality – Truth,
and Life, and Love: as
every scripture says. I believe.
Then I make up the details.

And I do like to call Her Goddess,
choosing to give Her the face
of the Moon more often than not,
inspirer of dreams and poets.
She has many names and faces.
Tonight I believe I'll say Ishtar.

1/9/08

Tweet Prose-Poems, August 2008

Dreaming of Colorado, where a friend is creating a temple. – 2/7/08

Last night's frost sank into my dreams. I woke up with a memory of whimpering from the cold, or did I dream it? Even the cats looked sad. - 15/8/08

Staying up far too late, chasing poems through the dark. Tonight they are elusive, glimpsed only. I'm wishing for red wine and chocolates. – 18/8/08

Desert man, u write v th sea. What wd u know? At last, aftr 2 lovg yrs, I find myslf irritated. Its end v wintr here. Stick yr perfct haiku. - 27/8/08

Listeng 2 classical music (Beethoven & stuff) w/ gr8 enjoymt. This never happens. Now I KNOW I must somehow have grown old. Or at least up. – 31/8/09


Written for twitter

Sunlight and green leaves: haiku and things for Augst 2008

1/8/08

Sunlight and green leaves
the morning fresh and shining
outside my front door.


I look no further
than the view from my front door,
forgetting heaven.

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

This sunny morning
my fifteen-year-old potplant
has shiny new leaves.

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

The wind blew the clouds
into bright white angel wings
this warm afternoon.

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

In my sunny sky
new moon and solar eclipse
are invisible.



6/8/08

After some silence
you write that I am a song.
All day I'm singing.



8/8/08

Suddenly sunshine
still with a faint edge of cold
fills the morning sky.

OR:

Suddenly sunshine
with just a faint edge of cold
filling up the sky.



9/8/08

A field of corn rows

The further we go
side by side in parallel
the more we converge.

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

Lady of moonlight
who dances across the dew
you lighten our space.



10/8/08

Softer than moonlight
a wind like the rush of wings:
transparent shimmer.

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

Cucumber plant

Blooming in darkness
behind a sun-coloured pot
tiny yellow stars.



12/8/08

Frosty night up late
alone with my two cats
huddled shivering.



15/8/08

After the frost
the dawn of a clear day
the sky cloudless.



16/8/08

A time of extremes
warming one side of the globe
the other freezing.

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

Full moon and bright star
the night suddenly warmer.
I bathe in white light.

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

On nights of full moon
her silvery voice whispers
poems in my ear.

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



17/8/08

On these frosty nights
only the cats to curl up
sharing body heat.



18/8/08

Spanish Fiesta

Fireworks and costumes
elderly ladies dancing
to rockers' guitars.

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

In winter I walk
on a wild and lonely beach
gathering shells.



22/8/08

Dobbing in Hubby: senryu sequence

Elbow in the back.
Not my favourite waking.
Accident, he says.

New water bottle
dribbles all over his face.
He opened it wrong.

How can I tell him,
"In age, slowness is wisdom.
Do things mindfully!" ?

"Oh, poop to you too,"
he says when I read him this.
But he's laughing hard.

I rescue his plate
parked on the bed and tilting,
just before milk spills.


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

As I grow older ...

People around me
seem confused, acting strangely.
I'm hurt and puzzled.

(Don't panic, folks; it's not autobiographical!)

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

Such tangles behind
the only way is forward
through those dark thickets.



23/8/08

A MySpace challenge

syllable pattern 4-6-4
begin each verse with “after the storm”

after the storm
at first only silence
and no movement

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

after the storm
stillness lifts softly, birds
begin singing


29/8/08

1:05 a.m.

Already it’s Friday.
Bed now, to dream of haiku
and wake up to them.

***********************
When a dragonfly
goes to sleep in its last dream
it wakes as faery.


30/8/08

Here, our warm autumn
is not a dying season;
it’s rare that leaves fall.
The air itself seems golden,
summer departing slowly.

A Rant Poem

(Last Wednesday's challenge from Poetic Asides. Not sure this qualifies as a rant exactly, but it's all I've got.)

Dobbing in Hubby: senryu sequence

Elbow in the back.
Not my favourite waking.
Accident, he says.

New water bottle
dribbles all over his face.
He opened it wrong.

How can I tell him,
"In age, slowness is wisdom.
Do things mindfully!" ?

"Oh, poop to you too,"
he says when I read him this.
But he's laughing hard.

I rescue his plate
parked on the bed and tilting,
just before milk spills.

C***

It’s just like one of those weeds
that swallows insects.
And it’s hungry! It seeks to feed.
I’ll swear it reaches out with its big side-flaps
and stretches and sucks —
you can hear the air retreat
in front of its jet funnel,
its ruching of in-drawn petals.
It puckers to an arch kiss,
pouts, plops like a fish,
flops to a loose pocket.
It gapes, it salivates, it wants your juices.
You tickle its hairy leaves and it gasps —
you are so pretty.
You are a winged thing,
and here is this coarse slobberer —
stop, take pity!
Only stroke it. Watch how it widens.
Oh yes — it’s sticky! It grasps, fastens,
clamps: magnet.
And the fierce little eye in the middle
goes red, goes wild, throbs blindly, sizzles.

Bites, tightens till you shrivel.


© Rosemary Nissen-Wade 1974
from Universe Cat, Pariah Press (Melb.) 1985
First published (earlier version) Compass

The title – in case you haven't figured it out already – is a four-letter word meaning female genitalia. I don't usually censor it, but as this is a public space and I don't want Google removing my blog....
First written in 1974 and bravely published by Chris Mansell in the now-defunct literary magazine Compass, this was a famous poem in Australia for a while – and in some quarters infamous. It was universally referred to, both by those who loved it and those who hated it, as "THAT poem". Many people begged me to change the title to something more discreet or euphemistic, but I have always been convinced that this title is absolutely right POETICALLY.

I do believe it was the first "literary" piece of its kind, at least in this part of the world, where it inspired others to poems on the same and similar subjects. 

Submitted 6 July 2013 for Poets United's Verse First: Appetite

Dream Poem

(Wednesday prompt from Poetic Asides.)

Frosty night seeping
into my dreams.
Waking and freezing
I remember only
whimpering from cold
afraid and alone,
was that real?

Yet Another Poetry Challenge!

This was a challenge I found on Lori Williams's blog on MySpace, where she and others have posted some wonderful interpretations; do go have a look. The challenge was to write a poem incorporating the words:

NEIGHBOR
DYNAMISM
FREE-FOR-ALL
INDIO
LUSTER
BURN
JUICES
INFILTRATE
SCROTUM
MOTH

(Only in my case with Aussie spelling.)

I didn't know what Indio meant, but thought it would be fun to write the poem before finding out. It would have been a different poem had I known it is both a place in California where various festivals happen, and the professional name of Canadian singer/songwriter Gordon Peterson. But I didn't know and this is the poem that happened:


Journey From Indio

"Indio, what's that?" she said,
"A place?" He cocked one eyebrow,
scratching his scrotum idly.
"I've got better things
to think about," he said.

She gave him a long look
from under her lashes.
"You know," she said,
"You lack a certain …
dynamism." She smirked.
He gave a low growl.
"Ha! I can still get
your juices flowing."

He let his cigarette burn down
in the ashtray, unnoticed
except by a tiny moth
which immolated itself
on the last flare of red
before the glow faded.

He faced down her stare
and moved in, for what
the neighbour, unable
to infiltrate the play
of their surface hostilities,
liked to describe as
"next-door having another
free-for-all," hearing
in the shrieks and thumps
something quite other
than what was happening.

They liked that little edge
of aggression, you see,
to get them started.
It moistened their lips,
made their eyes shine,
added to each, for each,
a dangerous, exciting lustre.

15/8/08

Tanka

Two kookaburras
on my TV arial
laughing their heads off.
A black bat, wide-winged, swoops low.
They fly to the nearest tree.


(The Wednesday prompt this week was Marriage. This was not written in response to it but simply in response to the events described. Then I realised, these protagonists were definitely a couple!)

Cento Australiana

Wednesday challenge (many days late this week). A cento is a poem made up of lines by other poets.

I love a sunburnt country.
On her dark breast we spring like points of light,
morning’s first colour, curving to day’s end

the children screaming at the water’s edge with seagulls,
hearing the birds’ ancestral incantations
among the arid relics of old tide patterns.

Sometimes when summer is over the land
the harbour breaks up in thunders of sunlight
and a steep blue sky

as I feel the weight of light begin to bleach my feet
where seagulls rode upon the foam
and the hawk in the high sky hung.

January heat. Raw saplings stand like cattle
at high voltage summer noon.
Flies multiply in the heat.

The scrub is thick in the gully
with graceful curves of dried up streams,
lantana green smell on your hands.

Look at the sky! It’s ‘trying’ to rain;
this desert, blinding, unnamed
leaving us undefended as the stars.

Red rock forms sheltering walls
by a ring of worn river stones,
lightning-gutted remnants.

Walk into the memory of rain
the dream of grass
the glint of fronds and blades in the light

this hushed sun-haze morning,
turning over wet leaves with my walking stick;
green leaves – a patch of world along a river.

Because a little vagrant wind veered south from China Sea
slow drops of rain began to fall; the wind
suspended in the amber sky.

The moon had rippled past the hotel glass
and suddenly there was a presence.
Sniff the bougainvillea and you’re in the south pacific again the purple islands.

The East wind sucks itself along sea shelves
it blows all summer long like a bellows
great murmur of rain spreading over suburbs and into the hills.

At night, in each other’s arms, we touch the sun . . .
watching the rocks bleed lichen onto the snow.
I am rested and walk away, into the rolling dunes.


Australian poets (in above order):
Dorothea Mackellar
Judith Wright
Joyce Lee
Rosemary Dobson
Gwen Harwood
Bev Roberts
Bruce Dawe
Vincent Buckley
Rod Moran
Jennifer Rankin
Kristin Henry
Dorothy Hewett
Les Murray
Dorothy Porter
Tony Page
Barbara Giles
Michael Leunig
Chris Mansell
Susan Hampton
Barrett Reid
Shelton Lea
Wendy Poussard
Mal Morgan
Gary Catalano
Katherine Gallagher
Jennie Fraine
Roland Robinson
Philip Martin
Liz Hall-Downs
John Shaw Neilson
C.J. Dennis
Oodgeroo Noonuccal
David Campbell
Pi O
John Kinsella
Michael Dransfield
Maie Casey
Bridget Porter Oldale
Judith Rodriguez
David Malouf
Doris Leadbetter
Jenny Boult (aka M.M. Bliss)

Younger Stepson

We met at Christmas.
I guess you’d heard
there was someone new
in your father’s life.

You kissed me shyly on the cheek
and included me
in the present for your Dad:

scented bath salts.
“You might enjoy them
together,” you said.

16 years later, you’re not
slim youth but solid,
handsome man.

In one forgotten family drama
we exchanged fierce words.
Now we talk deeply,
good friends.

Submitted 25 December 2011 (a Christmas 19 years later!) for dVerse Christmas. We no longer live near each other, but Younger Stepson is staying with his father and me this xmas, and the last line of the poem is truer than ever.

Cross-posted from my verse portraits blog, Impressions You Left

After the cold night: haiku and things for July 2008

(Several of these in response to posts by MySpace friends.)

3/7/08:

In memory of Jane McGrath

What we remember –
more than her beautiful face
and famous husband,
even more than her courage –
is her joyous laughter


4/7/08:

This overcast day
my cat on the garden bin
finds one patch of sun.


11/7/08:

After the cold night
sunshine, blue skies and birdsong,
my rose opening.

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

Haiku on Friday

The second Friday
in January last year
a new adventure
began, goes on beginning,
continually renewed.


13/7/08

I water my rose
find her a sunnier spot
between the haiku.


15/7/08

Thanks for the memory!

Couldn't find a rose
so he sent me a pansy
for thoughts ... years ago.


18/7/08:

The first bud blossoms
on the first rose I have grown
and cared for myself.

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

Bittersweet

When losing a friend
the memory of a smile –
such comfort, such pain.


19/7/08:

Busking fruit seller (netsuke)

Fruit fills the basket
but he holds his real treasure –
the ivory flute.


22/7/08:

haiku from between
tradition and tomorrow
forges a new form

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

haiku from between
tradition and tomorrow
kaleidoscopic

(in response to a challenge to complete the first two lines with a third)


25/7/08:

A wild wind last night.
I brought my rosebush inside
but it needs real light.

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

Green frog on the grass
in danger from careless feet
only yesterday.

Her two gentle hands
lifted and carried the frog
to her safe garden.


26/7/08

As twilight deepens
mountains improbably blue
fill the horizon.


28/7/08

Driving home last night
as rain clouds threatened I smiled
thinking of the frogs.

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

Had to prise her off.
She was such a clinging vine,
poor little Ivy!

How To Talk To Inanimate Objects

It might be a tree, or a table. Either way,
if at all possible touch the object
not with fingertips only but your palm.
Touch it firmly but gently, and hold it.
Send love to the object, purposefully.

Stand still and take a deep breath.
As you breathe in, allow your cells to open.
Become a large, empty, waiting space.
Keep very quiet, focused and yet relaxed.
Then feel the subtlety of its message to you.

The message will be a feeling, an energy,
before it is anything else. Afterwards
it may become music or a picture
or even words. Whatever it is, it will come
into your mind like your own thought.

Keep sending love. Otherwise
you will not trust the message, you’ll think
it’s only you: “I just imagined that.”
And keep breathing, feeling your breath
go deeply in and out and your feet on the ground.

Say thank you to tree or table or
anything else you have. Separate slowly,
bringing your energy back in your own body.
If you can, write the message down. You think
you’ll never forget; I promise you will.

24/7/08

(Wednesday prompt: a "how to" poem.)

My Friend's Son

At my house in Beaumaris
when you were five,
you ran straight down the passage
out the back door, jumped
in the pool and lay still
face down on the bottom.

Your mother, alerted
by profound instinct,
looked up at that moment;
in three strides reached the edge
leaned in and hauled you out.

Now you’re thirty-eight,
and the fault entirely
the other driver’s. Once more
you lie motionless. You have
your mind, your speech
and some use of your arms.

She is rescuing you again
in slower, subtler ways.
This time it takes
lawyer, carers, bedside visits
and long-term practical plans.

When I phoned, your voice
was strong and glad.
You sounded just like you.
And I kept remembering
you were such a funny
wriggly little boy.

(Wednesday prompt: Write a poem to an audience, i.e. addressed to a person or thing. Identify your audience in the title.)

My November Gift

(Another Robert Frost Challenge – except that it isn't quite. I only have a "Selected" Frost and haven't seen the original of this particular title. It's actually "My November Guest" but my mind kept reading it as "Gift" so I went with that.)

It was life, it was me,
it was the world opening,
a blossom before my eyes
or a window onto a view
or the door to outside.

Life was me, I
was the world, and
the whole world
came alive!

I was born in November.
I was born on the twelfth,
and I always knew
in some mystic way,
that was my day
Johnny Mathis remembered
singing “The Twelfth of Never”
(voice of a fallen angel
rich, sad, hauntingly sweet).
"And that's a long, long time."
And I love November,
month full of grace
full of splendour,
the month that will never
burn down to an ember.

I was born into spring
and renewal, that soft
Tasmanian spring,
late spring when it starts
toward summer, turning
more and more golden,
warming to boundless blue.

I was born on a Sunday.
Mum used to say:
“The child that is born
on the Sabbath day
is bonny and wise
and good and gay!”
(Gay meaning joyous
in those old days.)
I was born to good fortune
and every November
candles are lit, there is cake,
there are gifts, everyone singing.

I was born
into life, and that is the gift
and the world is a great gift
still, and I like after all
the gift of myself to me.
Now I look back, I see
the adventure I’ve been
this long, long, exciting time.

18/7/08

Into My Own

My place is a small island.
There are many islands,
most of them warmer,
good to explore,
but the one I return to
always in heart and mind
is the one where I was born.

I cannot lose this island.
I hold it within me,
leaf and stone. Now
as I start to be old,
I visit more often – or no,
the island visits me.

I thought it was calling,
I thought I hungered
to walk its earth again,
but when I looked, I saw
there is no more need.

I am always there,
swimming below The Bluff
or rounding that little bend
in Burnie, where deep pink flowers
cascade over a low fence.

I’m climbing with my book
to sit in the fork of the black wattle.
I’m tramping with my staff
through the bush behind The Gorge,
and the nature spirits
move with me.

Yellow roses bloom
in my father’s garden,
and I fall asleep
hearing, like an “All’s well”,
the chimes of the Town Hall clock.

15/7/08

My Crowded Solitude

(Wednesday Challenge: crowd poem)

The veil wears thin.
Last night a man I didn’t know
walked past me through the living room.
Just visible against the air,
he gave no sign of seeing me.

Short and squat and slightly hunched,
he was wearing a camel shirt
under a red wool vest.
Was he perhaps a gnome or leprechaun?
He looked purposeful, busy.

The night before, as I wrote
a poem for my dead friend Anna,
gone these sixteen years,
I felt her draw close to my side.
I had the impression she was still dazzling.

Most days, the cats have spates
of chasing invisible somethings
all around the house – between the chairs,
up over the boxes in the garage –
whatever-it-is staying, obviously, just out of reach.

Sometimes a group of lights
dances and swoops across my vision,
bright, white-blue, zig-zagging
in unison like connected lightning bolts.
I believe they’re sylphs. I tell no-one.

10/7/08

Vacation

I could use one.
The Universe has given me
one broken toe,
a big black splinter
in the same foot
which bled when I pulled it out
(the foot not the splinter)
and now I have to walk on
the sore spot – right on the ball!
(I don’t think so, ha ha,
not if you mean me.)
I keep bumping
the toe that I broke.

My little toe.
I look at the metaphysics.
“The little ones.”
Those fights with my son?
A sibling’s death?
But think — it’s on the left side.
Perhaps my direction …
spiritual direction.
Oh, what am I doing wrong?
All of it, probably,
every damn thing.
I bash myself
mentally as well.

My friends tell me,
“You need to slow down and relax!
You were running.
Stop going so fast,
that’s the message.
You hit a wall in the dark?
So quit rushing about.”
Can it be so darn simple?
Is that all I have to do?
Are my guides yelling, “Stop!”?
Well, it’s like I said.
A vacation.
I sure could use one.

3/7/08

Somewhere it's snowing: haiku and things for June 2008

3/6/08:

Poems from the desert
light the silence and distance
as stars the night sky.


6/6/08:

A line of footprints
emerges from the desert.
Or do they lead in?


8/6/08:

Even now a man
is walking around a stupa
reciting prayers,
the other side of the world.
And some, I know, are for me.


13/6/08:

Soft autumn sunshine
after a night of soft rain.
My new rose grows tall.


20/6/08:

An invading wind.
60-foot mountain laurel
suddenly shattered
twists off at one-third its height,
leaving a blank, empty sky.


22/6/08:

I breathe in deeply
the scent of dew on the grass
as the moon rises.


27/6/08:

A night of deep cold.
We pile on more thick blankets.
Somewhere it's snowing.

Shadorma

This week's Wednesday prompt was to write a Shadorma – a 6-line Spanish syllabic form with a pattern of 3/5/3/3/7/5 syllables per line. And they can be linked to form several verses of one poem.

Here are some:


Silk Painting

Nine candles,
a lifted chalice.
Dancing flames
make letters
that light a candelabra,
on a field of silk.


Harvest

Late summer,
festival of light …
Lughnasad,
love that word.
Love the idea of fires
leaping, hill to hill.


The Way

The lost key
out of the old door,
never found,
lately missed,
became a symbol to her
of all the locked ways.

So it was
she never explored
a new path,
never tried
a different opening,
not ever.

27/6/08

(Last Wednesday's prompt was to write an 'invasion' poem. I wrote mine as a tanka, which will be included in the June haiku on Haiku Page of the Passionate Crone.)

You're the Reason I ...

Wednesday prompt: Write a poem on 'You're the reason I (blank).' You decide what the blank is and who the 'you' is.

I'm late with this one. Didn't get it written until Sunday; then had to let it sit awhile after much tweaking, before I could see if there was more work to be done.


I think of a strange desert,
and you’re the reason.
Wild wolves and coyotes
lurk outside your cave.
The dog-wolf you claimed as protector
cowers beside you, afraid.
But you are not afraid.

You write of wandering,
of meeting the earth
on the earth’s terms.
(I steal your words
that entered my head
with the force of truth.)
You are learning, you say,
in small steps.

Beyond the far edge
of the vast Pacific
and further, deep inland,
you sit at a public computer
on a brief visit to town.
Time is short, but you find
enough to send one message.

Here in Australia
the desert is harsh.
It kills people.
Strangers it kills quickly.
We’re taught early:
“Don’t leave the road.
And if you break down,
don’t leave the car.”

There are no wolves
and very few caves.
This is no country for wandering.
How can I imagine where you are?
You mention a mountain, a stupa.
You plan a pilgrimage.

You’re the reason I play
with these contrasts,
waiting today for customers
at my stall in a cold market.
The wind-chill defeats
the clear sky, the climbing sun
bright silver through the trees.

I huddle in my jacket
of black wool,
pulling it around me closer.
The last of the summer tourists
went home weeks ago.
The locals, with dazed faces,
totter past in the wind.
It’s not a buying day.

You’re not the only reason
I’m dreaming of heat
and other places!
But you are the reason
I turn in my dreams
to an unfamiliar corner
of New Mexico.

And I think you move and travel
in the country of your soul –
as I in my tropics, despite
the shock of even a short winter,
am also right at home.
Yet, you’re the reason I wonder
what other lives and dreams may be,
what landscapes unexplored.

15/6/08

My Death

(Wednesday prompt: write a poem about your own death.)

The tunnel, the light,
the rushing wind,
the dim shapes glimpsed
as I glide past;
then the emergence
into a garden;
the love pouring
from the pure, radiant
source of the light,
and all that singing …
no, perhaps not.

A fragment, expanding
like widening ripples
to merge with the All,
one golden spark
rejoining the great fire,
finding my place
in the whole
consciousness of God,
attaining full knowledge,
full being … nah,
save that for later.

Heavens and Nirvanas
don’t entice me;
rather let me fly
airy, light and free,
to move at whim
between deserts and oceans,
mountains and rivers,
islands, waterfalls,
villages, cities …
let the world be my eternity,
my home.

5-7/6/08

What is to be said? – haiku and things for May 2008

2/5/08

Samhain

Black night with no moon.
The veil thins between the worlds.
What ghosts are about?


9/5/08:

Sunlight on water.
Like the sound of Basho's frog,
its ripples widen.



16/5/08:

A butcher bird lands
next to a clump of deep red leaves.
The sun glints on both.


Native Hibiscus

What is to be said?
The flowers' wide yellow mouths
are strangely silent.

Petals curling back
reveal the deep red centres
like velvet, or blood.


23/5/08:

I wake up crying.
He dries my tears with kisses
one soft on each eye.



30/5/08:

Morning.
Cold rain falling
endlessly.


© Rosemary Nissen-Wade 2008

Market forces

(Wednesday prompt: a poem about commerce.)

Work
in order
to earn leisure

trade
that leisure
for greater wealth

or
choose otherwise
poverty as freedom

but
money's freedom
so I've heard

no
money is
in fact power

knowledge
is power
get it right

so
trade money
to buy knowledge

then
trade knowledge
for more money

why
does it
seem so circular

why
do I
smell a trap?

A Boy's Will

(The next title in the Robert Frost Challenge)

A boy's will; how would I know that?
But I look at boys I've known
and think they probably didn't
will what they now have.

A child who ran towards life
ran everywhere, head up
laughing – how did he
become at sixty-four
the self-confessed curmudgeon
squinting into his glass?

The one who went exploring
into the bush at four,
who raced billycarts and scaled fences
and stole things, and always survived ...
what covered his scabby knees
in such conservative grey?

The tot with the owl glasses,
tiny astride a cannon,
but smiling safe and proud
beside his big brother and dad,
who dreamed of making his own pictures
with a camera – not words –
now spends all day writing,
except when his white head rests.

And the two I knew the best,
or thought I did?
That other child of laughter
other daredevil climber
loved stories of heroes with swords.
He spends his life at a desk.

The younger, with the smile
that got him whatever he wanted,
thought of a life on boats
and a perfect woman.
He travels by land and sky;
he travels alone.

These stories are not all sad.
Early desires change.
But a boy's will, what's that?
Peter Pan leaps and is gone.

Left: Boy 1. Right: Boys 1 and 2.






















Boy 3 (Right).










Boy 4.












Boy 5.