Growing

Now the moon

is getting on with the business of growing

daily a little more,

inching into Her eventual fullness.

Here on the ground

I decide this month of poetry journalling

shall be a book

a chapbook of my relationship with Her.

First the cover.

I won’t steal but I have no moon photos 

of my own.

I choose instead this lump of lapis lazuli.

Over-exposed

it shows one crescent edge, deep blue

fading to nothing,

the rest of the circle hidden in white light.

Behind that edge

is an arc of shadow, and an echoing curve

of golden glow

suggesting the dark side, and the reflected sun.

On the surface

flecks I know to be gold are vague and grey

like craters.

This stone depicts the moon; I convince myself.

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

I tell clients

that the Moon card in Tarot holds all implications

at once

of moonlight which both illuminates and distorts.

Dreams, visions ...

or illusion, deceit, delusion, self-deception....

Stay in the light

I say. Don’t wander off into the shadows.

Yet I know

the distracting, shadowy side paths can lead

to deep places

of intuition, inspiration, flowers that bloom in the dark.

Her teachings

are true but not aways straightforward.

I hold to Her, and

we move into wider space, like children exploring.

Journalling my relationship with the moon: 3
Also submitted for dVerse Open Link Night 7

This anthill: August tanka 2011

We were expectant

but the people didn’t come.

We were here, ready.

Now the night is arriving

with an odd, unfinished air.

3/8/11

peaceful day

a melancholy tune

wafts faintly

from somewhere nearby

ripples on still air 

9/8/11

cold morning

August closes in

miserably

even the rain

is half-hearted

7/8/11

rain keeps away

the longed-for visitor 

and brings instead

one seeking shelter here

whom I don’t refuse, but ...

23/8/11

this anthill

half the size of my fist

is tunnelled

like a honeycomb —

this hotel, this village

30/7/11

August chill: August haiku 2011

sunny morning

the red lid of my bin

against green lawn

5/8/11

he left lights burning

lids off food

yet we miss him now

12/8/11

August chill

invades the house

despite heater

morning sneezes

ring through the house

shake us up

this old poncho

I made when my kids were small

still warms me

morning coffee

my defence against

August chill

*********

Friday

sneezing

haiku!

19/8/11

winter hunkers down

a last long stretch of cold wet

after hints of spring

21/8/11

Some old ones from 2005:

The doves are cooing

over and over again,

disturbing our peace.

***********

The tree sends tendrils

up under the overhang …

seeking shade or light?

(rediscovered 22/8/11)

June 11

Lune sequence

The day has gone past.

I breathe in.

(My second wedding.)

Often I forget

for some hours

why this date rings bells.

I wore a pink dress —

miniskirt —

and my highest heels.

Heather was bridesmaid.

Promises now

to email; doesn’t.

The best man was Jim.

Years later

gave Bill’s eulogy.

(Another oldie rediscovered and reworked.)

12/6/10 - 22/8/11

Rising from dry grass

the Grevillea trembles.

Look! A king parrot.

17/01/06 

(Rediscovered 22/8/11)

Not pitter patter

more of a sonic boom

rain in the tropics

********

rain interferes

with my internet access

comments disappear

23/8/11

Creating haiku —

a solitary calling?

Ha, ha! No, crowded.

26/8/11

poetry

between hard realities

a pause for breath

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

red cribbage pegs

my Grandpa teaching me

sixty years ago

28/8/11

In Another Country

prognosis 

terminal and soon ...

are you still there?

your fine brain

undervalued

erupts

your brain creates

more and more cells

trying harder

your mind

expands and narrows

the focus

my mind 

fixed on your dying

stops

I do nothing

think

of nothing else

you think 

of those around you

dying or ?

you think

of those who have left

the ward

you are 18

you think of a future

you dreamed

29/8/11

Safe Starting Places

The moon, still hidden 

in a thunderous sky,

is two percent of full,

beginning its waxing phase.

We also, this wild night,

hide behind our walls

and only in imagination

discern the coming Spring.

I phone my niece Ellie.

Six months in her rural home

she starts to settle in;

finds friends, community.

My daily quote 

from Divine Mother says,

‘Go into your heart. Access

your infinite Wholeness.’ 

Journalling my relationship with the moon: 2

Invisibility

tonight

the moon is new

I’m feeling old

my shoulders ache

I walk outside

to see the moon

in a sky thick with cloud

no sliver

‘old women are invisible’

wrote poet Barbara Giles

when she herself was old

as I am now and feel

but the moon is only

obscured by cloud

and tonight we know

the moon renews

Journalling my relationship with the moon: 1
Included in the book THREE CYCLES OF THE MOON

Journalling My Relationship with the Moon

A woman on facebook invited others to do this during the current lunar month, beginning now. She created a group where people can share  about this experience. Naturally I am writing my moon journal in verse.

Later:
Some of my moon journal poems were included in a collaborative ebook with Jennie Fraine and Helen Patrice, who did the same exercise in the same lunar month. It is called THREE CYCLES OF THE MOON, and is available from Smashwords.

Violence

You were glaring through the window

when your face broke like crazy paving.

Zig-zag lines and angles fragmented the planes,

just missing your eyes and your nostrils

but cutting across your lips and severing both ears.

Then, as the glass shattered and fell,

jagged pieces crumbling slow to the ground,

your face was smooth again except for the scowl.

Your knuckles, though, still raised, were bloody.

Not a recent event, people, and not directly involving me. A poem from early 2009, just revised. Submitted to dVerse Open Link Night 6 

Published in BEYOND THE DARK ROOM, 2012

Texture

The Poem shivers, not with cold but fear.

Don’t rough me up, says Poem,

I’m not one of your tough ones. 

I don’t want lumps all over my surface, 

cracks in my fine skin, patches 

scraped raw, scars harsh to the touch.

I want, says Poem, some polish,

some delicacy, some finesse.

I need sensitive handling. Then

I shall reward you. You will feel

smoothness, easy passage to my heart;

softness, that can soothe your every pain.

From a Poetics prompt at dVerse

The Letter S

The serpentine letter S

stands of course for snakes

and makes the sound

of their sibilant hiss.

Also it stands for spiders

whom most of us detest 

but I see as sentient beings,

wise weavers of webs:

those delicate spirals, or else

those fragile circles suggesting wheels

crossed by strong, straight spokes.

Webs that stick to your face

or sway in the breeze;

webs that shine after rain,

strung with sparkling droplets

prismatic as sequins, to flash and scintillate.

The letter S begins

these words — song 

and singing, soft,

surprising, startling, shocking,

sudden and slow,

stiff and supple,

slender, slim, 

slippery, shivering,

superb, and at last sweet.

It sounds (or sighs, or sometimes sings)

in these words — graceful,

glamorous, glissando, gasp,

upset, upstart, push, press,

pause, peruse, pursue,

promiscuous, promise, persist,

espouse, aspire, and especially, surely, ascend.

You can’t make scones,

you can’t even stir the mix,

unless you include the letter

and/or sound of S.

You can’t steer a bicycle, board a bus,

cross the Sahara Desert

or discover a lost continent!

Without this useful consonant,

you’re just no good, you’re less

than a sorry, struggling mess.

And so, my friends, I rest my case.

I spread my hands and smile, 

even smirk a smidgeon, as I say

that for me to fully exist — Rosemary

Nissen-Wade, aka SnakyPoet, it’s essential 

to use several smart and sensual, sexy letters S.

A response to the latest Thursday Think Tank at Poets United

She’s Merely a Chocolate Dilettante

She said, ‘I'm craving chocolate at present,’       
which seemed to us a very strange remark –         

as if it were the whimsy of a moment,                       

and of no moment whether light or dark.     

      

‘You,’ I said, ‘are no true chocoholic.’                       

The others nodded fervently and long.                       

I must confess I felt quite melancholic.                       

I'd thought she was a soul-mate. I was wrong.

           

‘I hope you soon get over it,’ I told her                                   

but she was deaf to irony and scorn.                                   

It would have been a waste of time to scold her.           

Deficiencies like hers aren't made but born.          

             

There but for the grace … let's show compassion.           

She'll never know the taste of true delight,                       

our unabating, unregretted passion,                                   

that serotonin bliss with each new bite.     

An oldie from 2007.  I was looking to revise it, so as to have a post for the dVerse Open Link Night 5 — but decided it works just fine as is. Only the title and italics are new.                       

Venice

I don’t love cities,

but I entered Venice —

in a speedboat not a gondola —

and the sun on the water sang.

In the great buildings 

along the canals 

the soft-coloured stone 

seemed to breathe.

A man in black created 

toys of coloured glass,

taking a murky lump from the fire

in tongs, and twisting it bright.

Cobbled lanes 

one person wide

brought me face to face

with windows of carnival masks.

In a vast room covered in art

were paintings by Paul Veronese

who became an Ascended Master,

surprisingly pastel and pretty.

The Bridge of Sighs 

was a covered walkway.

Sadness lingered still

in the cells on the other side.

San Marco was slightly awash.

Decades earlier my friend wrote a poem

on ‘the tesselated tiles of San Marco’.

I sent her a postcard saying I was there.

My foster-son

who was living in Modena then

was an enthusiastic guide,

beaming and telling the stories.

In the centre of Venice there are

no cars, no cars, no cars.

Think of an inner city 

without any cars!

Cities are places 

I do not love. 

But when I think of Venice

my heart surges with song.

Prompted by 'Going Urban' at dVerse.

Pan

I don’t at this moment see the flute 

but the horns are cornucopias.

He lay on a bank where willows grow

and the little ones whispered in awe.

Some paint him gross. He is elegant

though muscular, and larger than us.

I am looking at his picture on my desk,

planning where it will go on my altar.

He is a god of love in his own way,

sensual and wild, strong and tender.

He is the Nature we see around us

and also the earthy nature within us.

His full and shapely lips, his liquid eyes

and fine aquiline nose are distinctly Greek.

His pointed, fleshy ear, its whorls and folds,

indicate his animal hearing, acute.

He said he has come to this household

to take away our pain. We trust him for that.

I am no nymph but a Wise Woman,

yet his presence brings new fire to my lover.

Prompted by FormForAll - GHAZAL at dVerse

I realise, having read the comments on others' attempts, that this doesn't qualify as a ghazal — too linear in a couple of places, and every verse uses enjambment, which is a no-no. But I am pleased with the poem anyway, and will have fun practising the form.

She

Melbourne

She sits at her desk

on a Spring day.

On her right is the glass 
door to the back garden.

She is crafting a poem.

She is happy.

Her man and her children

are about their business.

She feels a strange frisson

rippling her back a moment.

She could be in a time-warp,

caught. Or timeless: forever,

in unbroken thread,

sitting at her desk etc.

This might be 1980, or 1985.

Murwillumbah

At my desk on a Spring day,

crafting a poem,

the glass door to the garden

at my right, my man asleep,

my children grown and far away

absorbed in their own lives,

I feel a strange frisson

and here I am. And there I am.

I can see that desk, that garden,

that woman across time.

I am in my body. 

I am here, I am happy.

And she is in me, with me;

we are two points on a thread.

It is 2011. It is now.


In response to a prompt at Poets United's Thursday Think Tank.

I Start My Evening Walks

I start my evening walks again

after a long gap,

plodding tired and heavy

at the end of the day

in a still chilly dusk.

Head down, I’m surprised

by clover dotting the grass,

little happy faces.

A lone ibis flies,

stretching in a straight line

for the hills of home.

Only ten minutes today.

I turn about

and the round moon confronts me

low in the sky, bright white.

Now I am peaceful.


Published in BEYOND THE DARK ROOM, 2012

A Hope

Damaged people, the expert said,

have drama and confusion always

following them around; that’s the way

you know that they are damaged people.

I don’t know how this boy, our friend,

a young man now, will learn to shake

dramas and confusions from his life.

Yet he survives all, I don’t know how.

We, too, survive all: frightful tales

half farce, half tragedy; the tension

that obscures his kindness and ideals,

hard for friends ... only we two survive.

Friends only, we’re not family

but he knows that he can come to us 

when there’s nowhere else to go; and so

I guess we are more than friends only.

Must be karmic, our connection.

I know we can’t mend his damage, but

maybe we can demonstrate this thought:

positive progress must be karmic.

(The form — consisting of repetitions and syllabics — is my own invention. I haven't called it anything, and I doubt if I'd use it again. It doesn't seem to serve the poem very well.)

Posted for dVerse Open Link Night #4

Heaven Café

May we all meet in heaven café

writing for eternity

— Natalie Goldberg

 (dedication, Writing Down the Bones)

I sit in Heaven Café

with my friends Leah and Jennie,

writing for eternity

at this time on this date

in our own places.

Today the café is called La Vela.

It has fake stucco orange walls,

a fake clay pot — half a pot —

jutting from one as if embedded,

and framed photos labelled Italia.

The long black is stewed and bitter,

the muffin fell into bits

when I touched it, leaking

melted butter sauce on my purple shirt.

Heaven has strange manifestations

sometimes, I think as the noise

of Sunnyside Shopping Centre surrounds me,

the cacophony I often tune out

suddenly strident, many-faceted.

Someone is banging metal on metal

rhythmically, purposefully, as if working.

Doors slam, machinery hums

in a constant background,

loud music blares from speakers —

different tunes from different outlets —

and a monologue resonates

through the microphone,

its manufacturedly cheerful note

blurring indecipherably.

People move constantly up and down the ramp,

round and round the circular floors:

a spinning kaleidoscope, never still.

11 o'clock arrives. I shudder in relief

and prepare to depart. But then

I look again and see

Jennie's dark head somewhere in Auckland

bent over as she writes rapidly,

a sideways tilt as she chews her pen

and ponders the landscape half-denuded of trees;

Leah's fair curls in Haifa,

head similarly bent, at a corner table

amongst a talkative crowd

of crones with auburn perms

and faint dark moustaches,

and somewhere in the distance

the sound of guns.

‘Heaven is where the heart is.’

Or is that home?

Our hearts are on the page as we write and write.

Home is a notebook, home is a poem,

home is each other, faithfully meeting,

wondering how to create for eternity,

and keeping our hands moving.


Posted for Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft at dVerse.
I've been working on this one for 10 years! Any ideas how to improve it?