I ... entered the poem of life, whose purpose is ... simply to witness the beauties of the world, to discover the many forms that love can take. (Barabara Blackman in 'Glass After Glass')

These poems are works in progress and may be updated without notice. Nevertheless copyright applies to all writings here and all photos (which are either my own or used with permission). Thank you for your comments. I read and appreciate them all, and reply here to specific points that seem to need it — or as I have the leisure. Otherwise I reciprocate by reading and commenting on your blog posts as much as possible.

22 February 2010

High Driving

Lake one side
sea on the other
I’m driving
into cloud
those towering white mountains
along the high ridge.

17 February 2010

The First

She is dead.
He remembers loving her,
finds photos from her youth
(I mistake one for their daughter)
wants to go to her funeral
‘I think I should’
would hitch-hike for days
to get there, until
I remind him he’s 81
and married to me now.

10 February 2010

Adam Hurst Plays 'Dusk'

How serious he looks,
the young musician,
dressed up in suit and hat
to play his ‘gypsy cello’,
his long white fingers
deft on the strings.

His soft boy mouth
is briefly tremulous
as if restraining weeping,
or singing silently.
His eyes are shaded
by the brim of his hat.

The sombre music of dusk
flows from him with authority
as it must. Composer, interpreter,
maker of the instrument:
he and his music are one.
Night and stillness arrive
with the final chords.

(See and hear)

2 February 2010

Another hot night: January Tanka 2010

tap tap tap tap tap
silence in the library
is not as it was
I liked the old reading room
with the great dome, in Melbourne

still I must be glad
for the computer access
which serves the whole world
and me, creating tanka
tap tap tap tap tap tap tap

5/1/10


warm night
poetry and chocolate
before bed
I don’t shower
liking my skin smell

12/12/10


the weather cools
and there's a scent of rain
the injured cat
starts eyeing the outdoors
still forbidden to him

19/1/10


another hot night
after the one-blanket chill
of early morning
bare feet and sarong all day
and the fan still blowing hard

21/1/10


the DVD works
we’ve sorted which desk is whose
where to feed the cats
and how we can beat the heat —
home begins to shape itself

26/1/10

Outside the pane: haiku for January 2010

sunflowers
and a new neighbour
waving

5/1/10


the wind chimes are up
boxes out of the living room
bit by bit new home

7/1/10


mountains
from every window
thick with trees

******

outside the pane
a pair of lizards
stopped for gazing

11/1/10


in the hottest hours
even the ants
are still

14/1/10


clouds piled
on each other
on treetops

15/1/10


kookaburra
through the kitchen window
looks us over

butcher bird
on the veranda
nods its head

22/1/10


‘My life has begun,’
he writes, moving out of mine —
someone else’s son.


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

lightning out there
the edge of the cyclone
rattling the dark

28/1/10