High Driving

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

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.

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)

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