The Passionate Crone

On Riverview Road

2012-02-16T23:17:00.001+11:00

(just round from the High School)

The smell of sweet sap

grows stronger daily as I drive past

where council workers

are clearing toppled trees

that came down with half the hillside

after the last big rains.

It used to be a quarry.

Boulders fell down too.

When the clear-up began,

orange earth movers crawling about

half way up the hill

looked like matchbox toys.

Today it was all smooth.

By late afternoon

even the sap smell had gone.

Now this patch of hillside

has no trees at all, not one. It looks as if

it will collapse even easier next time.

Submitted for Poets United's Poetry Pantry #87

Generational Adolescence

2012-02-08T11:03:00.000+11:00

I was just fifteen

when everything changed –

when freer children,

who were allowed to go

to movies like that,

leaped up and jived in the aisles

to Rock Around the Clock,

even – or especially –

in staid country towns

around regional Australia.

I was still fifteen

when Elvis arrived.

Handsome as the devil;

voice of an angel.

The mothers and fathers hated

his slim gyrating hips.

We loved the tilt of his lips,

the wicked light

in his laughing eyes,

and the singing, the songs, the beat.

At seventeen

I moved to Melbourne.

Every Saturday night

there was a Town Hall dance.

Hawthorn, Caulfield, Albert Park, Box Hill.

Diane Rosewall and I went to them all.

We wore circle skirts, wide belts,

flat ballerina slippers,

and white flouncy petticoats

hemmed with ropes.

We were good middle-class girls.

One night two real-live bodgies

claimed us for a dance.

Oh how those wild boys moved!

swinging us through their legs

and up on their hips.

Oh how we twirled and swirled.

But we must have seemed tame to them.

They thanked us very politely

and went hunting faster girls.

Tall lads they were,

in the extreme of fashion:

skinny black pants, long jackets

with shoulder pads and shiny lapels,

their hair slicked back

into lovely ducktails.

Oh how our careful parents

would have disapproved!

That makes anything

more exciting.

Or anyone.

I ended up choosing men

who worked with their bodies,

rode motorbikes,

knew how to use their fists;

men who swore.

Later I preferred

beards and flowing hair.

I wore long robes. We sat and smoked

in dark coffee lounges, listening to Folk.

But that was after the era ended;

the wild boys and girls and the rest

all sang "That'll Be the Day,"

and cried when Buddy died.

And it doesn't matter where I am,

every time the band

plays Rock Around the Clock,

I'm up and dancing

and shouting the words

till I drop. Till the broad daylight.

Written 14-15/3/07; posted now to accompany previous post, Face to Face,
and submitted along with that to Poets United's Poetry Pantry #86
(not #87, sorry for posting wrong link there; try the next).

Face to Face

2012-02-08T00:18:00.003+11:00

for Diane

It’s raining again. The clouds

cover the full moon’s face.

But I can’t be cast down tonight —

my friend, fifty years gone,

found me tonight on facebook.

Her face, so long unseen,

looks very much the same

as that girl’s whom I remember.

Only five years ago

I wrote her into a poem

of her and me as young things,

going dancing. She tells me now

I haven’t changed much either,

the years have been kind. (We put

our best photos on facebook.)

But yes, the years have been kind.

The face of the Lady Moon

will not stay hidden long. In any case,

tonight my heart is dancing

like a young thing, like a girl.

For I know that faces return

and are recognised.

How lovely the face of my friend —

my friend who is named for the moon.

Submitted to dVerse OpenLink Night #30

and to Open Link Monday at imaginary gardens with real toads
and also to Poets United's Poetry Pantry #86

The water: January tanka 2012

2012-01-31T21:51:00.001+11:00

I’m alone tonight
watching a program on twins
how they are bonded
identical DNA
the self recognised and shared

4/1/12

hot rainy day
thunder blowing close
while you lie still
unsettled weather
weeping up a storm

10/1/12

rainy morning
the cats fight over breakfast
I chase them outside
they try to catch my eye
plaintive faces through the glass

17/1/12

Water Dragon year
begins with torrents of rain
following king tides
New Year is good for cleansing
the rivers keep on rising

24/1/12

the water
keeps on coming
funny
some people think
we can control nature

24/1/12

black feathers
on my doorstep
oh foolish night-bird
when I chased you away
from my cats I meant it!

27/1/12

end of the month
a long month of sorrow
and heavy rain
I come to it sighing
and spoiling for a fight

31/1/12

Respite Carer

2012-01-20T18:47:00.001+11:00

For the first time

I call on emergency respite

so I can go out:

chiropractor today,

doctor next week.

How will he cope with this,

being baby-sat like a child?

When I come home,

they are watching Shakespeare in Love.

She hasn’t seen it before.

‘You don’t have to leave,’ he says,

as she rises and gathers her bag.

‘Stay and watch the rest.’

She sits back down at once.

At the end, when she does leave,

they hug each other goodbye.

‘See you Monday!’

Submitted for Poets United Thursday Think Tank #81 - Goodbyes.

Two Poems for Shelton Lea

2012-01-13T23:03:00.015+11:00

Posted to accompany an article about Shelton for Poets United's 'I Wish I'd Written This'.

Yesterday

Yesterday

the book of your life arrived.

You're three years dead.

The author began the story

while you still had breath.

I am scarcely mentioned.

The first time we met

I showed you how to crush aspirin

in the bowl of a spoon,

inserting it through the wires

that held your broken jaw

as if I was feeding a baby.

This was at Mal's.

He showed you my poems.

You told me, 'Make the pauses

where the breath would naturally pause

if you were speaking it.

Shelley and Keats did that.'

I could go on listing anecdotes

piled up over twenty years.

But everyone has many yarns

of you, troubadour,

and most remain untold

except when old friends gather.

It's true I was not central

to your tale. Others, closer,

are also reduced to a line.

She has the essentials.

Still I find it strange

that you are dead and I'm gone.

7/9/07

Poems from a Peach Melba Hat

for its author, Shelton Lea (1946-2005)

I was tiny Abalone Press

operating alone from home

in the hours my kids were at school;

funded by Bill's diving money,

hence the name.

And it had a name by then.

You touted for ads for the end-papers,

a 19^th Century practice you revived,

joyful to demonstrate

self-funding for poetry presses.

But two of the seven ads

were Bill's and mine, ah well,

and one was your partner Christine's.

You wanted a matte pink board,

a delicate shade. You wanted

Joy Hester's painting

'Head of a Woman with Hat',

her splendid skewiff dignity

on your front cover. You got it.

And on the back 'Chloe'

the famous nude

from Young & Jackson's bar

with you, larrikin dandy,

perched on the brass railing

protecting her frame.

The tenth Muse, you called her.

You came for two days

to consult on the layout

and stayed two weeks with pleurisy.

You thought to go straight back home,

all day on the rattly Gippsland train.

You thought it was just a cough.

Convalescent, you yarned with my boys,

explaining the shape of a fugue

and the reasons crime doesn't pay.

On both you were well-informed.

You were funny and wise

and you heard them.

They never forgot.

We argued over apostrophes.

Now I'd have let you leave them out,

but that was twenty-seven years ago.

I missed one, reading 'julias' –

personal name for a lawn, how quaint.

Till I heard you, too late, reciting 'julia's lawn'.

Some of the Establishment scoffed

at the excellent reviews,

insinuating partiality.

The street-wild poet, the very small press.

Who could praise so highly

and not be swayed

by friendship or even lust?

We dressed very fine for the dinner,

the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards.

You were short-listed for two:

Poetry and Australiana. No,

you didn't win. But the reviewers beamed

most politely on those who'd sneered.

Three years ago now, a boarder

stole my only copy when he left;

inscribed of course. My son David

found me another, signed,

in a second-hand bookshop.

I open it up. It begins:

'the day was fifteen bright balloons'.

It ends with the line,

'beware the greed of time.'

Somewhere in the middle

you're coming out of prison

on a winter day, hearing the Beatles:

'love, love me do.' And we do.

Published All Travellers We (Montmorency, Vic., Eaglemont Press, 2007.)

27/10/07

'Sad Am I Without Thee'

2012-01-07T12:36:00.018+11:00

I liked the last turn of the last page
of the school choir songbook,
where we came to the Maori lament —
because it was beautiful: sweet
mournful notes and mellifluous
syllables of a foreign language,
finishing with the plaintive
long-drawn-out English: ‘Sad am I
without thee.’ We would sigh then
softly, on the last out-breath
before closing the book.

This is what comes to me now,
with your lingering death
finally accomplished, New Zealand girl.
Although you were not Maori,
perhaps you won’t mind that I return
to that most lonely and lovely lament
in my long memory, when I think of you.
Which at present is all the time.

I am sadness incarnate,
it lives in my body, shakes me
like the seizures you had,
doubles me over and throws me
into an absence of comfort, the pit
of black grief, abysmal
contemplation of
how young you were, Penelope.

I am old, but already
life calls me back to itself.
From the bedroom, my husband
in pain, is talking to me as if
I could hear, and I do hear
as he crashes to the floor.
I pick him up, massage his foot,
help him to the bathroom and back.
The cat on the bed murmurs
to greet me; I croon in return.
My body is crying for coffee.

You were here, you are gone.
I have spent all night
and half the morning weeping.
I know you loved me.
You knew I loved you.
I wanted to save
your stories and poems and paintings, but
the world is full of art.

Strangely, the world
is full of you. You can’t be cancelled.
I drink my coffee deep.
Tonight I shall watch
a show you would have liked too
on TV. Tonight
I’ll turn the next page. What comes after
‘Sad am I without thee’?

A 'page turner' poem submitted for dVerse / M:/P MAG collaboration.

As the Year Ends

2011-12-31T14:16:00.006+11:00

not knowing she is atheist
he sends up a prayer

through air and ether to heaven
for the girl across the water

who now must be dead or near
whose spirit felt close last night

as if she hovered to read
a poem I could not write

An sequence of attempted Crystalline couplets, submitted for (and the form explained at) dVerse FormForAll — Couplets for the New Year — but I am still caught in this present ending. The story behind the poem is here.

Writing the Prison

2011-12-29T08:03:00.003+11:00

(Acknowledgments to Anne Sexton’s “Ringing the Bells”)

And this is the way we go
to work in prison
and this is the gate where we stand
still for the metal-detector and open our bags
and open the books in our bags,
and these are the writers in prison
who wait for Friday,
two hours a week that feel like freedom;
and because we are working in poetry
and because that’s another country,
an open space outside what is known,
we are the circle of laughing poets
who lounge in the plastic chairs in the Education shed
and smile at the baffled officers
who watch but leave us alone,
who watch us escape
the gates and doors with locks;
and these are the bluestone blocks we pass
on the way into the prison
guarded by guns as if it were true
we are not free, we are not free;
and these are the tunnels we walk on Tuesday
in maximum security,
cages that whisper open electronically,
whisper open electronically and whisper closed;
and this is how the poetry shouts,
as outspoken and bold
as a fearless child,
and this is always my freedom responding
to the words that respond to the prison
where poets write and are free
two hours a week, on Tuesday or Friday,
when the door in the wall cracks open
and lets me in, and we meet;
and although I may work and go
out again through the tunnels and gates and locks,
I am the one who will never
escape the prison.

Written in 1987
First published La Mama Poetica anthology (Melb. University Press 1989)
Also in Walking the Dogs (Pariah Press anthology, 1994)
Included in the author's Secret Leopard: New and Selected Poems 1974-2005 (Paris, Alyscamps Press, 2005).

Posted here now because of a conversation in which this experience came up. A conversation in haiku, actually, at Haiku on Friday, on facebook.

Submitted to Poetry Pantry #81 at Poets United

I'm replete: December tanka 2011

2011-12-28T09:16:00.007+11:00

suddenly onscreen
yellow gorse with prickly leaves
straight from my childhood
on the island growing wild
long time since I tramped that land

7/12/11

for dinner
our broccoli
newly picked
our own fresh herbs
in the omelette

12/12/11

My sixtyish friend
is visiting Zambia.
Young, she taught there —
now meets those women again.
Her glad email makes me cry.

13/12/11

the clover is out
all over the nature strips
at the corner house
steering the mower she laughs
and waves from her father’s lap

I trudge up the hill
tonight Basil the corgi
rests on his doorstep
I click my tongue as I pass
we’ve had two days of cuddles

old Coco spaniel
stops to let a car swerve past
then goes slow uphill
but I notice he’s faster
than old me puffing behind

20/12/11

I’m replete
contented
full
of everything
but poetry

Post-xmas #gogyohka

28/12/1

Submitted to dVerse Open Night #24 and Poets United's Poetry Pantry #81

Versatile Blogger Award

2011-12-14T17:31:00.006+11:00

Mohana, who blogs at insanebloom, kindly awarded me this, weeks ago. Time I passed it on! The rules are:

1. Thank and link to the person who nominated you.
2. Share 7 random facts about yourself.
3. Pass the award on to 5 other bloggers.
4. Contact the winners to congratulate them.

The dilemma is, with so many wonderful blogging poets, how do I choose? And surely those I admire will have received it already? Also I don't want to double up on those I already gave the Stylish Blogger award, even though they deserve it. (That one I posted on another blog, to leave this for poems. This time I'm including the award here, thinking that more readers of poetry are likely to find it here.)

But before I list my chosen poets, I am supposed to reveal seven things about myself — things, I suppose, that you might not otherwise know or guess. (So the fact that I have cats wouldn't count, as anyone who reads my poems will find that out sooner or later.) Hmmm ...

Random facts about me:
(I don't promise they'll be interesting)

1. I have never had my appendix out.

2. When I was 15 I acquired two stepbrothers, both named Bill (i.e. both my parents remarried and each of their new spouses had a son called Bill).

3. Summer always takes me by surprise, in that I never quite get with the insect repellant in time to stop those first mosquito bites.

4. Everyone thinks my favorite colour is purple. I do love it, and love to wear it, but my real favourite colour to gaze upon is deep blue.

5. At university, I used to get Honours marks in (some) Philosophy subjects even though I was only doing a Pass degree.

6. I was a timid child and a shy, awkward teen. (No-one believes this, in the face of my adult outrageousness.)

7. Yes, I do know my fashion sense is eccentric. I like it, OK!

Here are my nominees for this award, with links to their blogs:

Brian Miller waystationone

Jenne’ R Andrews La Parola Vivace

Brendan MacOdrum Oran’s Well

Lorna Cahall lorna cahall

Merlene Fawdry Poetry in the Rough

(If any of them turn out to have receive the award already, I'll find some replacements. With all the brilliant bloggers around, it won't be hard!)

Quilt

2011-12-12T22:19:00.004+11:00

I made it when my kids were small.
It lay on our queen-size bed
all the further years of that long marriage.

Not your neat, traditional crochet squares
but larger, lacier, the pattern
more complex. I was proud

of this persevering work of my hands:
a fine thing, a whole year to make.
I loved its rich, strong colours.

It was variegated green, emerald to sage.
It was two tones of red, intense
and understated. And the wide borders

were black. I thought they gleamed
with power and love. The top, defined
by wider black, turned back over the pillow.

After the marriage ended in tears,
I folded the quilt away in a cupboard ...
bundled it off at last to the charity shop.

What comfort could it be to my old age?
Rage had turned it ugly in my sight.
Grief had made it lie too heavy on me.

Now I live in a warm climate. I like
the Indian cotton throw I bought:
lighter, freer, matching my present love.

Intended for dVerse Poetics: Fabric of our lives — but I was too late. Check the link nayway, for a diversity of good poetry!

Being Super

2011-12-04T11:03:00.002+11:00

I am not
the small, lone girl who
runs and jumps
on her lawn.
I am strong: beyond hurt. I
am power now. Me.

My cloak floats
out from my shoulders.
One leap and
I fly high,
up, up and AWA-A-A-A-Y — oh yes,
I am Superman!

Submitted for dVerse Poetics - going Comic challenge. (The form is a double shadorma.)

Other side of the glass: November tanka 2011

2011-12-01T08:29:00.000+11:00

on his balcony
cool breeze on a warm spring day
entertaining friends
the young man smiles as he sings
of ageing and loneliness

8/11/11

when visitors come
my cat waxes voluble
greeting them at length
loud conversational mews
complaining she’s underfed

15/11/11

‘Must be getting old.
I just can’t raise it tonight.’
How astonishing —
at 82 years 9 months
and fresh home from hospital.

22/11/11

window-frog
half the length of my thumb
pale belly
green toe-pads like pin-heads
other side of the glass

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

‘write of Wild’
others raised leopards
alI I saw
was a tiny frog
high up my window

29/11/11

Rubaiyat: Ways of Going

2011-11-29T21:10:00.004+11:00

My days are slowly drifting into rest —
a kind of ease and yet a kind of test.
Though slowing age has made me leisurely,
I miss being quick and busy; I miss my zest.

And still I say I’m lucky. Not for me
(not yet at any rate) the agony
of cruel illness, not for me the blight
of dimming mind in dread senility.

I think again of her mind, young and bright.
She’s ready now, she says, to enter night.
Her mind is housed in an invaded brain,
the tumour slowly crowding out her light.

She’s tired of fighting, certain it’s in vain.
Shut away from sunlight, trees and rain,
she turns eighteen but must not celebrate.
Her mind and body learn increasing pain.

I don’t believe she has one certain fate —
but she believes, raging and desolate.
‘Live fast, die young ...’ Some fools might count her blest;
but she’s been neither fool nor profligate.

I’m old: I’ve lived a life, fulfilled a quest.
I watch my sun start dipping to the west
with no great eagerness; but I admit,
aching for my young friend, I come off best.

Submitted to ‘imaginary garden with real toad’, Rubaiyat prompt nd also to dVerse Open Link Night #20

Last Light

2011-11-23T18:17:00.044+11:00

In Memoriam Joyce Lee 1913-2007

I read your last book backwards

dearest Joyce, beginning

with your over-90, inevitable

reflections on approaching death

and wandering back

through final memories,

a new perspective on the past

more peaceful, even more grateful

then arriving

at your last understanding

of childhood, existence itself

and your own country.

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

For many friends, as for me,

surely the subtle fragrance

of deep conversations with you

permeates these pages.

I muse on our last phone call.

You were afraid, you said.

You, with all your faith!

I had no comfort, but the book

tells me you heard:

‘Talk to that angel who visits you;

ask for help.’ You write of his help

at the end, brightening your sky.

The late Australian poet Joyce Lee is not to be confused with the English performance poet of the same name. Her last book, Bountiful Years, was published in 2007 by Rebus Press and launched posthumously.

This piece is also included in Poets United's Poetry Pantry #77.

Prose to Poetry

2011-11-11T21:15:00.009+11:00

At dVerse Critique and Craft this week, we were asked to turn an already poetic piece of prose into a poem, first arranging it as lines of verse and then crafting it further.

I happen to be re-reading Rudyard Kipling’s Puck of Pook’s Hill at the moment. Kipling’s prose is beautiful (after all he was a poet too). I took excerpts from the chapter I’ve just finished, leaving out many connecting words and passages but otherwise not changing the language. I did arrange them into verses of equal length, even at this stage — can’t help myself — and already tried to hint at a new story.

Then I rearranged the verses further and left out even more words so as to (hopefully!) bring out the music. I did make some changes at this stage, e.g. to omit details irrelevant to the poem I'm creating, such as the names of the hill and the man, but they are very tiny changes.

The title I’ve given the poem in both cases is not the chapter heading (that is ‘A Centurion of the Thirtieth‘) but a phrase from the text.

They are still Kipling’s words, not mine, so I would have to call each version a found poem.

Una went alone to the Far Wood.

She looked down most cautiously,

and saw a young man

covered with hoopy bronze armour

all glowing among the late broom.

But what Una admired beyond all

was his great bronze helmet

with a red horse-tail that flicked in the wind.

She could hear the long hairs rasp

on his shimmery shoulder-plates.

He leaned forward, but his eye

was caught by the setting sun.

It had come down to the top of Cherry Clack Hill,

and the light poured in between the tree trunks

so that you could see

red and gold and black

deep into the heart of Far Wood;

and Parnesius in his armour shone

as though he had been afire.

‘Wait!’ he said, lifting a hand,

and the sunlight jinked on his glass bracelet,

‘Wait! I pray to Mithras!’

He rose and stretched his arms westward,

with deep, splendid-sounding words.

Through the goldy-brown light

of the beech leaves they walked.

They found themselves

at the little locked gates of the wood.

Una went alone to the Far Wood

She saw a young man

all glowing among the late broom:

great bronze helmet with a red horse-tail
that flicked in the wind.

She could hear the long hairs rasp

on his shimmery shoulder-plates.

He leaned forward, but his eye

was caught by the setting sun.

The light poured between tree trunks.

You could see red and gold and black

deep into the heart of Far Wood.

He in his armour shone as though afire.

‘Wait!’ he said, lifting a hand.

The sunlight jinked on his glass bracelet.

‘Wait! I pray to Mithras!’ He rose

and stretched his arms westward.

Deep, splendid-sounding words

through the goldy-brown light

of the beech leaves

at the locked gates of the wood.

Missing

2011-11-05T15:53:00.008+11:00

1
we walked hand in hand

now we reach out but can’t touch

do you lag behind

or are you leading the way

in another direction?

2
you come seeking me

‘I think I lost you,’ you say,

‘we lost connection’

I lean into your embrace

‘yes, I just wrote that poem’

Composed for the dVerse Man’yoshu prompt
(though I was too late to include it in the list).

If you're looking for a post on colour, my apologies for the wrong link. Try this.

That Sunday: October tanka 2011

2011-11-04T00:33:00.000+11:00

Spring morning

I walk down the steps

into sunshine

new cobweb tendrils

cling to my jade plant

4/10/11

two flying insects
thin green and round black
hit my window
then bounce away at once
back to the Spring garden

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

Full moon and one star

shining over my back yard.

I blow a quick kiss

and give thanks to the Goddess

that my sick friend becomes well.

11/10/11

a busy day

until he lies down to read

and drops asleep

curling into the pillow

the book moving with his breath

18/10/11

tall bamboo

behind my neighbour’s fence

is not much like

the round stems my Dad grew

when I was a child

I walk down

into the valley

by myself

and come back home

with a new tanka

I’m not brisk

I don’t wear special clothes

when I walk

I amble slowly

the breeze in my hair

25/10/11

that Sunday

listening to Chopin

both of us

feeling as if we’d never

heard his music before

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

the gargoyle

my son David brought me

from Paris

is free of its neck chain

but one wing is broken

26/10/11

in this land

we sit down on the ground

for a yarn

one way the invaded

have taken us over

31/10/11

near miss

on roundabout

lesson

don’t make poems

while driving

#gogyohka

31/10/11

Beltane Night 2011

2011-11-01T01:41:00.008+11:00

All week he’s been full

of passion and play.

Tonight his back hurts.

I go out to see the moon

but it’s still a wet Spring —

she’s cloud-hidden again.

But I can write poems

in the fertile season,

warm offerings to Life.

Submitted for Poets United's Poetry Pantry #73.

31st October

2011-11-01T01:39:00.006+11:00

The little girls from across the road

came trick-or-treating tonight

in their witch and fairy costumes.

We’d forgotten Halloween, crude

corruption of Samhain —

which anyway is a different season

here, different time of year.

But we had some jellybeans,

emergency rations in case

his blood sugar drops. I poured a handful

into their empty icecream bucket.

I wonder what they’d have said

if they’d known the smiling old couple,

their neigbours, were actual witches.

Submitted for Poets United's Poetry Pantry #73.

Streams of Consciousness

2011-10-29T10:57:00.002+11:00

high above ocean

on this piece of the hill

this peaceful hill

always had to

sit up straighter

speak when spoken

the little girls playing

across the road

laugh together

she had a language

of private gestures

quick faces made

in the yard opposite

swings and guinea-pigs

crowd

cross your legs

at the ankles

don’t laugh out loud

expansive sunlight fills

the wide circle

of the cul-de-sac

that’s dangerous

unladylike

don’t be silly

Amanda yells to her kids

her smile is wide

her stance open

grown awkward

I returned home

less and less often

at night I gaze

from my vantage

the street rests unafraid

For a dVerse exercise on conflation: expanding one poem with another which is unrelated. I chose to weave my two threads in and out of each other. I’m not sure it’s a true conflation; it could be said that there’s a relationship of contrast. And of course the title is slightly ironic; this is not a 'stream of consciousness' poem in the usual sense.

Love (Etheree)

2011-10-26T09:58:00.002+11:00

Love

has music

you don’t hear;

you are not listening

to the underneath of love

but to the lovely surface sounds

which are all cooings and slurpy kisses

catching your attention and filling up your ears

so you never discern those almost inaudible notes

that sing the promise of pain, of looming, inescapable sorrow.

An etheree is this form of poem, lines increasing by either words or syllabes, 1 - 10. I’ve used a word count here rather than syllable count. There can also be reverse etherees, and double etherees counting from 1 to 10 and back again from 10 to 1, or even double reverse etherees. I suspect I’m not done with this new (for me) discovery yet.

Between busy life and atrocious internet connection, I missed the ‘shape poem’ prompt at dverse, so am submitting this instead to OpenLinkNight #15.

Not My Calling #BAD11

2011-10-16T06:59:00.004+11:00

My garden

looks bedraggled

in the rain.

My one broccoli leaf

flourishing yesterday

is full of holes.

Half the mint

has suddenly turned brown.

I decide

to keep buying my food.

This is my Blog Action Day post on the topic of Food. I have to hope the situation is not as bad as we fear, since I am such an abject failure at growing my own!

I am also submitting this for dVerse Poetics prompt, taboo subjects. Not that the subject of food is taboo in general, but this politically incorrect treatment of it on Blog Action Day is surely taboo! Shouldn't I be deploring the hunger in the world; shouldn't I be writing poems to encourage Westerners to grow veggies instead of giving up? Shouldn't I at least create a deep and substantial poem instead of this slight piece? I nearly didn't post it for fear of being seen to be shallow and selfish — and this prompt is all about overcoming our fears and writing the truthful poem anyway ... and then sharing it! (Besides, I have already tackled all the big taboo subjects, lol.)

Soft Morning

2011-10-09T07:30:00.001+11:00

Soft morning

fresh from rain

the birds just beginning —

and I walk out again

one childhood morning

from The Orchard House

my grandparents’ house

in Spreyton, Tasmania

early after rain

when the air

had just this light

this scent.

Girl Blowing Bubbles

2011-10-07T17:34:00.001+11:00

Hard to see the girl

behind the bubbles she’s blowing

brightly filling the air.

Her face is covered

in sparkling globes

that pour, more and more,

from her breath.

Look closely though

and you’ll see,

in the lifted arm

the straight head

the intensity of her stance,

how focused she is.

Nothing else exists

for her but the light she creates

over and over and over

floating away on the air

and being replaced.

I don’t need to see her face

to know her expression,

or to remember she’s me.

Submitted for Bluebell Books prompt, week 11.

#BAD (Blog Action Day)

2011-10-05T08:05:00.003+11:00

Blog Action Day rolls around again on October 16th, which is also World Food Day, so the topic of course is FOOD. I have registered this blog and also my personal blog SnakyPoet. I hope to persuade the other members of WordsFlow to be in it too.

In case anyone hasn't caught up with Blog Action Day in the past, it's one day a year when bloggers all around the globe focus on one topic that we feel needs attention called to it. In the past the topic has been chosen by vote; this year, because of the coincidence of the date, it's already decided.

How one treats the topic is up to the individual blogger. How I'm going to approach it, I don't yet know, but I'm going to have fun thinking about it.

I know that whenever I give 'food' or 'eating' as topics in writing workshops, they're very inspirational! Food is primal, basic to our survival and therefore a great source of pleasure. Hunger is painful. Starvation is fatal. There are people in the world experiencing hunger and even famine right now. Oh yes, there's lots to write about!

Hot windy day: Tanka for September 2011

2011-09-30T19:57:00.003+10:00

blue-green waves

framed on the Courthouse wall

sequinned fish

in symmetrical rows

Young Offenders’ Program

5/9/11

farewelled

my visiting son

tearful

as silly mothers are

as mine was with me

6/9/11

these geraniums

started from a cutting

have come with me

from house to rented house

always making me smile

geraniums

cheery plants and hardy

blooming bright

remind me of my Dad

so very fond of them

over the way

children are singing

a schoolyard chant

on this peaceful day

children are laughing

on this date

forty-four years ago

I had been

a brand-new mother

for one whole day

closing my eyes

I lean against a post

almost nod off

until a smell of rain

sharpens the lazy air

13/911

hot windy day

the fire haze in the sky

thankfully old

from far north of here

chilling reminder

20/9/11

Those coils on my lawn —

brown snake or diamond python?

Live snake or shed skin?

Deceives me every time,

that twisting, exposed tree root.

27/9/11

I was four

she was white and strange

my Nana

in that hospital bed

I refused the last hug

29/9/11

Turning 30

2011-09-30T17:56:00.005+10:00

I recall now, bemused,

the unwonted depression I sank into

around the issue of turning 30 —

a trauma which, at the time, seemed huge.

The only depression I’ve ever known,

it started six months before
the momentous event, and lasted

a further six months after.

I can’t get back in the head of that girl.

What did she so dread? It was like

the demarcation point of age for her.

Too many pop songs, perhaps!

It was after all, also, the end of the sixties,

that perfect time to be

if not teenage, still young enough.

Suddenly it was all over.

There she was, with both her children

already born and no more planned.

Girlhood and fertility both behind her.

Nothing but matronhood left.

Silly girl, she didn’t know

that in her 30s she would be ripe and juicy

emitting a glow. Nor that the secret scribblings

would demand to be valued and aired.

I look back, and yes, I think I do

understand now. I see that unconsciously

she was mourning the end of childhood,

saying a long drawn-out, final goodbye.

Then she leapt into power and freedom,

new kinds of adventures, and began

the long journey of twists and surprises

which led her here to me.

30 Poems in 30 Days: 30, the number 30

Submitted for Poetry Pantry #69 at Poets United

Always the Writing

2011-09-30T08:09:00.003+10:00

Always the writing writhes

to be born and flower,

pushing up through a dark

ceiling of earth.

Always it pounds in my blood

wanting to break on you,

on the reef of your hard body,

explosive as tides crashing.

The writing is rhythms that swell

and will not be gainsaid.

It pushes, burrows, surges, leaps.

Hammers and shrieks. Weeps. Begs.

After the blind climax, the ebb

has the panting of breath,

a giant wave receding.

I am its point of calm.

First published The Nonsense of Living anthology by The Aardvarkers

In Secret Leopard (Paris, Alyscamps Press, 2005) available from Amazon or through www.nissen-wade.com

This is an old one I've resurrected especially for the dVerse Meeting the Bar prompt: write about poetry. See also What I Build and Working (3)

Building

2011-09-29T07:56:00.006+10:00

I am building my life stone by stone.

It was always so. I didn’t know it.

Each decision puts in place

a foundation for the next.

Gradually, one by one,

they all fit together.

I am building my life stick by stick.

It’s natural. I only just noticed.

Every new direction creates

forks in branches, fresh twigs.

It becomes a structure,

lacey and intricate, with leaves.

I am building my life word by word.

Shining like diamonds, they are nails.

The nails of my words

hold everything together.

They can fasten stick to stone

or stick to stick. Even stone to stone.

I have built a house.

I have grown a tree.

I have made the house secure.

I have used the wood; it will last.

It’s a good, safe house. I like it.

But mostly I am out, climbing the tree.

30 Poems in 30 days: 28, building something

Submitted for Poets United's Poetry Pantry #76 and for dVerse Open Link Night Week 19

The Urge to Merge

2011-09-28T20:18:00.000+10:00

Though I’m far from virgin

it can still be urgent.

Is that verging on absurd

or splurging as obscene?

On the verge of age —

no, over the edge —

may I still rage,

or be left on a ledge?

With passion surging

I need no urging.

Only one way to purge

this urgent urge.

I can’t scourge it

away with detergent;

if I submerge it,

it emerges resurgent.

Is there some norm

from which I diverge

or is elderly lust

where we’ll all converge?

30 Poems in 30 Days: 24, an urge

Dark Moon

2011-09-27T19:53:00.004+10:00

moonlight

rainfall

street lights

grey-blue mist

backlit clouds

not one star

moondark

light rain

street fall

backlit mist

blue-grey clouds

no night star

nightfall

dark street

rain-lit

star-mist dark

light grey-blue

back street night

street rain

light fall

dark moon

Journalling my relationship with the moon: 30

And submitted for dVerse Open Link Night #11

Hana

2011-09-27T17:02:00.005+10:00

I could pull a card for Hana, lady of joy,

except that I know her soul is Priestess.

She is poet and true-seer, guided by the Moon.

These last few years she has been exploring

Empress expression, blossoming in the Sun,

dancing in water, in tropical gardens, cradling

her infant daughter, watching her young son

play and grow, willing him strong,

expanding herself, embracing herself.

But she is Priestess, who keeps her soul free.

The man with the face and form of a god,

eternally a youth, was temporary.

Venus was too much woman for Adonis!

And the soft, lush, fertile island

needed at last a contrast. She travelled

to the cold north, to a landscape

of tougher beauty, and found

her roots in rock and earth.

Deep roots. They bring her back now

to the temperate land of her birth, her girlhood.

Here she begins the ordering process,

the process of story. She has lived through

great adventures, emerging changed forever

and whole. She begins the chronicle.

********

Seeker of joy, finder of joy, may you always

dance in the light of the Universe!

And may you, Moon-woman, continue

inspiring and living true dreams.

Journalling my relationship with the moon: 29

In the Gilded Tarot, the Moon

2011-09-27T00:32:00.001+10:00

In the Gilded Tarot, the Moon

has a soft face, sweet lady

gazing up at the light she reflects.

The crayfish, mysterious symbol,

is not crawling up on land

but jumping half out of the water.

The towering gates

are like massive candles

or Olympic torches.

Central is a gold disc

like an artist’s palette,

and like intersecting cogwheels.

The sun is about to rise.

Low down over the water,

the sky is pinky-purple.

The dog and the wolf

bark in unison to greet

rising sun and risen moon.

This is a variant image

from the one in Rider-Waite.

Could I do magic with this?

I could, except that

no-one’s deceiving me,

they’re all asleep.

And I too need my sleep.

No need to find a secret name

for my hidden enemy —

the one who deprives me of rest

is myself, while the real moon

climbs the sky oblivious.

Note: This is not a reading of the Moon card in the Tarot, but
a personal take on the images in this particular Moon card.

Journalling my relationship with the moon: 28

Motivation

2011-09-26T23:54:00.004+10:00

Nights of no moon,

days of no moon poems.

Somehow I am four short

of those I need to fulfill

the promise of one every day

for this lunar month.

It’s true: there were days,

a few days bunched together,

when I got jack of it —

turning up faithfully

night after night

for your no-show.

Funny, when I do it

simply for spiritual connection

with no thought of poetry,

I don’t care if I can’t see you.

Knowing where you are

behind the clouds, I blow you

a smiling kiss anyway.

Journalling my relationship with the moon: 27

Hunting

2011-09-26T17:42:00.003+10:00

In Kenya, the Masai still hunt the lions,

predators which take their domestic beasts

though it’s illegal now to hunt the Kenyan lions.

The men who hunt them are tracked and hunted.

The warriors walk a fine line: brotherhood, tradition,

or the new conservation. Their world is changing.

‘We don’t kill lions any more’ (title of training film).

There will be compensation for any stock lost.

Can Masai still be men with no lion hunts? Lions

are successful hunters, perfecting their killing techniques.

The Masai have had their own conservation: unlucky

for one warrior to kill more than nine lions.

A hunter called Sunepai has already killed twelve,

expects to die early, and goes on; knows no other way.

It’s about food, which is to say — life

for lions and also the Masai. Can’t be solved easy.

(based on a National GeographicTV program)

30 Poems in 30 Days: 27, food

Small Moon

2011-09-26T13:33:00.002+10:00

Small moon, I don’t see you

although your accompanying star

is the one light visible tonight

in our clouded sky.

For most of this lunar month

which, theoretically,

I was to spend looking at you,

I have been looking for you

and not finding.

Not your fault.

You presented yourself, I know,

but the weather ran interference.

You will be the same moon

(won’t you?)

next time you begin

your waxing phase.

But I wanted this one!

This phase of you. This present

incarnation, manifestation, moment.

The moments skip past so fast

and we can’t grasp them.

I am not the first to discover this

but lately the realisation

seems more urgent.

Also we can’t

see past impenetrable veils.

I shall have to settle

as others have done

for the moments I am given

saying thank you.

Journalling my relationship with the moon: 26

Looking Back

2011-09-25T18:15:00.010+10:00

We like our little house,

we tell each other. It’s cosy.

And it is. And we do like it.

But one day, suddenly,

unexpectedly, I say,

‘Sometimes I miss

the house we left behind’ —

remembering palm fronds

seen through bedroom windows,

and the rhythmic sound of waves.

‘I know what you mean,’

he mutters, to my surprise.

Despite the tiny bathroom,

the back yard we couldn’t use

for the noisy neighbours,

and the too-high rent

despite the python in the roof

which made us fear for our cats,

and a low street that could flood,

despite the awkward hike

from laundry to clothesline,

the brown snakes in summer ...

come to think of it,

I don’t miss it that much.

Note: For the benefit of non-Aussies, our brown snakes are deadly

30 Poems in 30 days: 22, leaving something behind

Rediscovering Stonehenge

2011-09-25T10:31:00.003+10:00

(title of television program)

I am watching the History channel:

an excited anthropologist

thinks he has rediscovered Stonehenge

as a temple not to the sun but the moon.

Above the window which shows

the sun dawning at Summer Solstice,

another frames the light of the moon

coming to fullness every month.

And even the sun window also shows

Winter Solstice sunset — the true focus?

It seems self-evident to me:

the Goddess and the God,

the cycle of the seasons turning;

neither sun nor moon alone, predominant,

but both, together, ruling the heavens

and shining down on the earth.

People, he remarks in wonder,

were able to carry out science

at quite sophisticated levels, observing

the movements of lights in the night sky.

Their physical skills, he adds,

cannot be parallelled. At certain stages

of the agricultural cycle, even today,

there’s a labour force with nothing to do.

The great pyramids at Giza

were built around the same period.

Newgrange in Ireland, believed to be

solar observatory and tomb, was earlier still.

What magic built Stonehenge and the rest?

He tells us: Infinite time and patience!

A German disc has been found,

dating from the Stonehenge era.

He displays it on screen, noting

it not only depicts the sun

but gives equal space to the moon.

At Newgrange he shows us a carved stone:

three spirals coiling from one centre.

He wonders if this has religious significance.

Oh, just ask any witch! Yes, that

is a spiritual symbol, a clear triskelion.

After the end of the Ice Age, he tells us,

‘the moon-fearing hunter-gatherers’

were superseded. Agriculture needs

the cycles of the sun. But when crops failed,

did they blame themselves for neglecting

an earlier, lunar worship? (Yes, he suggests.)

He shows us tall gold wizard hats, decorated

with all the phases of the moon. The people,

he supposes, needed priest-kings, masters of time,

who understood these older mysteries.

Finally, with irritating time and patience,

he arrives at my own conclusion:

sun and moon are united, sun and moon

are in harmony! Those ‘windows’ at Stonehenge,

when you get them lined up just right, reveal

everything that they reveal: the movements

of the sun mimic those of the moon; and

the movements of the moon mimic

those of the sun. It becomes self-evident,

and he says it: They are one and the same.

Journalling my relationship with the moon: 25

Aso submitted for dVerse Poetics: Repetition.

P.S. The triskelion mentioned is duplicated in the Poets United logo in the sidebar at the right!

Getting Acquainted With My New Cards

2011-09-24T19:16:00.002+10:00

(pulling one card from each new deck

to describe my present path)

The Celtic Oracle offers me a ride

with the Lord of the Underworld,

King of the Wild Hunt

pictured horned

and giving chase.

Change is promised

and chaos. I should think

before drinking from his cauldron.

New life — but am I ready?

The Wildwood Tarot gives me

Page of Stones, the Lynx,

and I warm. Lynx is a favourite totem,

telling me now: ‘Pay attention

to the physical realm, the effects

you generate.’ A strain of wildness

may need balance. There are new

beginnings. My pathway

is one of apprenticeship.

The phantasmagorical Vampyre Tarot

presents me with The Fool:

the original creative seed.

Change and chaos again, and infinite

possibility. ‘A renewal in any or all

of our human domains.’ Great leaps of faith

like moonbeams from dark clouds.

He is the god Pan, drunk with passion.

And he is perfectly balanced. I shall win!

(Even when no quotation marks are used, many phrases derive from
the texts of these oracles. Not entirely a found poem, but....)

30 Poems in 30 Days: 20, three related objects

15% of Full

2011-09-24T14:29:00.003+10:00

My energy correspondingly wanes

and so does his. I’m down with flu,

he’s lagging just a day or two behind

with the same exhaustion that hit me

twenty-four hours ago. He has taken

to his bed with The Australian Author.

He is an Australian Author —

but perhaps not The. I am one too,

but similarly.... Why am I sitting here

making poems, when I could be snuggling?

I guess I’ll be doing that to my dying day.

Making poems that is, not snuggling.

‘Not snuggling.’ It’s a theme.

I want to be comforted, babied,

now that I’m past the crabby phase.

(Lucky for me he’s not there yet.)

The moon and I are becoming

littler, younger, foetally curled.

Journalling my relationship with the moon: 24

Body Language

2011-09-24T13:14:00.003+10:00

My ears ache,

my throat burns,

my nose is alternately

stuffed up and streaming.

My body tells me

loud and clear

I need a rest,

time out, time off.

‘Go to bed,’

says my husband.

‘Stay in bed!’

But once I’m there

he hovers

demanding anxiously

at the slightest twitch,

‘What’s that? What’s wrong?

‘What can I do?

What can I get you?’

Peace, I think,

and silence. Solitude.

30 Poems in 30 Days: 23, include three parts of the body

To Drive or Not to Drive?

2011-09-24T13:12:00.006+10:00

The question is

should he drive again?

Two weeks left

to renew his licence —

for five more years, ye gods!

Suddenly he wants to.

He wants to try

our sweet new car.

Before that he was happy

with months of being chauffeured.

I stop one day near home

and let him drive the rest

of the quiet road.

He fumbles over how to start

and I remind him.

He snaps at me

and gets us safely home.

But it’s not enough.

Now he thinks he won’t

surrender the licence.

Sometimes the pain in his legs

excludes all other thought.

He continually asks for help

with computer operations

he used to know well.

‘It’s only next Wednesday,’ I say

‘Till you see the Geriatric Specialist.

Let’s ask him if it’s wise.’

‘He’ll say no!’ he responds

at once. I rest my case.

30 Poems in 30 Days: 21, answering a question + 29, driving.

The Moon Shrinks

2011-09-22T12:58:00.002+10:00

as does my attention upon her.

She is not to be seen

through the haze that even the sun

has trouble piercing, the smoke

that even as it thins

fails to disperse.

But I know that behind the veil

she’s a crescent,

a sickle, a scimitar, a curl of light;

outline of a pregnant belly, holding

darkness within, the shape

of the unknown.

Oh void, oh mystery, oh edge

of nothing-something,

I am starting to forget you —

starting not to want

to enter the dark to look for you.

It’s Spring, Ostara: I dance in the sun!

Journalling my relationship with the moon: 23

Resting Together

2011-09-21T09:48:00.002+10:00

I love to watch them resting beside me:
my man and my little tortoiseshell cat.
She is very polite, waits until we embrace
and then settle into our sleeping positions
before she paces delicately up the bed
and lies down between us, purring.
Sometimes our hands collide
as we both reach out to stroke
her curving back, or scratch behind her ears
before we all fall into comfortable sleep.

Her brother, the black one, he’s the morning cat
coming boldly up the bed as soon as we wake.
She moves away and lets him take her place
for his turn at the petting and cooing. Then
they both start agitating for immediate breakfast
and one of us must rise to oblige, and the day begins.
Afternoons, they share the bed, now free of people,
sleeping curled together or echoing each other’s shapes.
Sometimes my lover joins them there for a nap.
I love to watch them peacefully resting together.

30 Poems in 30 days: 19, sleep + 26, an animal

Submitted for Poetry Pantry #69 at Poets United

Love in the Afternoon

2011-09-21T00:51:00.006+10:00

The three-day-old smoke haze hides the moon.

My Astrological Moon Calendar and Planting Guide

shows it exactly halfway between full and dark —

so I imagine this to be a time of perfect balance.

Anyway it’s Spring. The afternoon is warm.

All the work is done. There are new sheets on the bed.

We kick the cats out of the bedroom and make love.

Long, lazy love lasting for hours; leisurely and light.

His skin is clean and smooth, sweet-smelling.

I nestle in, we stroke each other all over.

Afterwards he declares it our best loving ever.

‘You have a short memory,’ I say. ‘Some other times....’

There is something to be said for the slow descent

towards the dark, and the way the focus narrows in.

As the time of a life cycle shortens, moments lengthen.

‘In the last quarter, the movement is toward integration.’

Journalling my relationship with the moon: 22

Submitted for dVerse Open Link Night #10

My Locale

2011-09-20T08:00:00.005+10:00

At present it’s rather surreal.

The haze from yesterday,

only a little thinner,

continues to every horizon

and, we know, beyond.

The coppery sun, setting,

glows weakly through the veil.

We’re heading into fire season

with signs of a long dry.

We know that, further north,

the burning off is right

that caused this cloud.

A worse hangs over us

if we leave the grasses lush.

I live in a small town

near a large mountain

shaped like a brush turkey

or the profile of a warrior’s head.

We are surrounded by canefields,

banana plantations, some dairy farms

and the hidden illegal crops.

The wide slow river

fills to its banks often

and sometimes floods.

In winter the cupboards

fill up with mould.

Brown snakes every summer

encroach on suburban paths.

There are places

close to the mountain

where the energy is so strong

few can live there with ease.

(The mountain is full of crystals.)

At night we sit out on our verandas

watching the UFOs streak the sky.

No, we are not fond of strangers.

This area used to be

Australia’s best kept secret.

Now it’s over-populated.

Well yes, it may be true

that I haven’t told you everything.

The bottom line is: Stay away!

30 Poems in 30 Days: 18, Your city, town, locale.

My Game

2011-09-19T17:41:00.004+10:00

‘It exercises my brain,’ I say,

or, ‘It de-stresses me.’ Truth is,

my Grandma taught me long ago

and it suited me, then and now.

‘Little Rosemary,’

a family friend used to say,

‘With her feet on the ground,

and her head in the clouds.’

I like to withdraw

for dreaming or musing

or just being

with myself, by myself.

I read, I write, I think —

those solitary occupations.

I go for walks alone,

and I’m a solitary witch.

You must have guessed by now

my game is Solitaire,

otherwise known as Patience.

In different ways, I need both.

Once it was cards,

now it’s computer screen.

It requires a small part of my brain;

the rest goes wandering.

Real or virtual, the cards

are red and white and black:

the Goddess’s colours —

which makes me smile to myself.

I savour the satisfying click

as I shift them with my mouse,

while in my mind I shift

the gears of the Universe.

30 Poems in 30 Days: 16, Playing a game

Making Connections

2011-09-19T07:22:00.003+10:00

All day a haze of white

has covered the sky

turning the sun dark —

but it’s too hot

for a nuclear winter.

The internet tells us: smoke

from controlled burns and others

spreading across the corners

of two States.

Tonight of course

we see no moon.

Out walking late this afternoon

we spoke to neighbours

we’d never met,

all at that point mystified.

Much later, watching on telly

an hour of Jimi at Woodstock,

I well remember

seeing this first at the time —

the height of the Vietnam war

and the height of the protests.

We knew about the napalm by then

and My Lai. So did he.

Oh my God, we said in ’69,

as he played the Star Spangled Banner

and gradually his guitar

gave us the noise of screaming

over the blare of guns.

Confusion / connection / communication.

Even in times of no light.

Journalling my relationship with the moon: 21

30 Poems in 30 Days: 25, Include a pop culture reference.
(Yes, the 30 Day poems are liable to get a little out of order now,
as I seek to combine prompts when possible.)

Hello Telstra

2011-09-18T18:51:00.003+10:00

Hello Telstra, this is me.

I wish to make a declaration —

The termination of our contract shall be

not so much a breakage as an amputation.

It’s not unreasonable, I think,

to want more internet access than I’ve got.

It’s not even unfair to say you stink.

(Wait — are you a person or just a bot?)

Do you know your wireless connection [piece of shite]

only works in the mornings up until 8

and after 10pm or sometimes midnight?

Nothing in between. I wait and wait.

I fiddle, experiment, cry and curse.

And I know when I phone for a technical person

the situation will rapidly get worse,

though one might think it couldn’t possibly worsen.

I’ve been there before. They are full of advice

and it works for five minutes, then back to square one.

I’m sorry, it’s too much. No more being nice.

You’ve had it, it’s over, you’re under the gun.

You have broken my trust and disrupted my life.

I am discombobulated, devastated, mad.

I so need my sleep! You are in for real strife.

It’s Ombudsman time; I know I’ve been had.

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

She unplugged her laptop and closed the lid,

then picked up the modem and hurled it hard

through the open doorway. I promise she did.

It smashed on the fence down the end of the yard.

30 Poems in 30 Days: 15, A broken object + (simultaneously) 17, 3 words of 4 or more syllables

Tonight the Moon

2011-09-18T12:00:00.003+10:00

Tonight the moon

is a bright orange light,

as big as if full

but only three-quarters now

and hanging low down

under its nearest star.

I am glad to note that star

always attached to the moon.

I call to my love to come down

where he can see the surprising light

of this almost-orb we have now

blazing, not quite at the full.

Once he was full

of energy, sizzling like a star,

but frail and slow now.

Still he is thrilled by the moon

sending orange light

through the trees, and comes down

to where he can see it whole. I help him down

the steep stairs. Out in the yard, we are full

of childlike delight,

standing gazing at moon and star.

‘Yes,’ he says, ‘An astonishing moon.

I see it clearly now.

‘But I must go back up now.

I feel unsteady here. I think I might fall down

when I tilt my head back to look at the moon.’

Already my pleasure is full,

having shared with him tonight’s bright moon and star.

‘Let’s go!’ I say, keeping it light.

We climb back up the stairs by orange light

shining on us here, tonight, now.

I follow him like that attendant star

which follows the moon up and down

the arc of the sky; follows from new to full

and through the dwindling to the dark moon.

Leaving the moon, we enter interior light

knowing that life is full even though slower now —

having adventured down to an orange moon and a star.

Journalling my relationship with the moon: 20

Visitations

2011-09-17T10:41:00.000+10:00

My son visited from cold Melbourne

for the first part of his holiday.

We turned on drizzling rain.

Then he went up to the Gold Coast

to laze on Main Beach with a book.

He enjoyed some sparse, weak sun.

Now of course, he’s back home

and here we have warmth

every day, the mountains clear,

the sky wide and cloudless,

the river sparkling and the ocean

a shimmering vista of deepest blue.

Last Christmas my younger stepson,

also from Melbourne, came.

We said he brought the sun.

It was a hard year, that one. How gladly

we anticipated sweet summer.

He left. Then came the non-stop rain.

The sudden flooding drowned whole towns

and half a city, just a little north of here. Now

in this perfect Spring, we breathe in, and wait.

30 poems in 30 Days: 14, A change in the weather

Alteration

2011-09-17T00:49:00.004+10:00

Low in the sky

the moon has lost

the top of her perfect circle.

Close by

is the only visible star.

Two streetlights

as if in reflection

sparkle, half hidden by trees.

Most of the houses are dark;

only two windows lit.

Despite their peaceful beauty,

I am a little uneasy

viewing these paired lights.

The still air seems expectant

with the certainty of change.

I write a haiku sequence

and realise I don’t even know

what is haiku any more.

I’ve moved into

a different space.

Quietly, without notice,

I am changed after all these nights

attending to the moon.

Reality and dream

evaporate. There is only poem.

Journalling my relationship with the moon: 19

Waning

2011-09-16T00:14:00.001+10:00

Now she is getting on

with her descent,

her gradual dwindling.

We too, ageing,

enter a waning phase.

Fearing the loss

of the other,

do we not notice

it happens bit by bit?

We shrink in

to four walls

a small town,

fewer activities.

These last two nights

I haven’t even wanted

to look at the moon

just like I don’t want

to watch you (or me)

go gradually

into the dark, into nothing

but a faint edge of light.

Journalling my relationship with the moon: 18

Submitted for dVerse Open Link Night 9

Invisible to the Naked Eye or, Coulda Fooled Me

2011-09-16T00:13:00.001+10:00

‘If you don’t mind me asking,

what is that?‘ — pointing

to three rectangles

of crudely woven straw

dark brown, looking dirty,

attached to the exit wall

of the Medical Centre.

Our doctor, with

a lift of his eyebrow:

‘That? That’s

art, Andrew.’

30 Poems in 30 Days: 13, a poem with dialogue in it.

The Last Time

2011-09-14T09:43:00.008+10:00

We don’t always know

the last time is the last.

The last time I made love to X

(any of the exes)

the last time I saw Karen

before she died

the last time I set up my stall

at Pottsville Market

the last time I swam

in that creek with the pelicans

the last time I left

the island where I was born.

And sometimes

we do know.

After the divorce my first husband

walking away down the street

the awful knock on the door

to fetch me to my mother’s dying

tears all the way in the plane

going home from my last trip to Bali

the last time I saw

my stepmother’s evil smile

the deliberate savouring

of the very last cigarette.

30 Poems in 30 Days: 12, Doing something for the last time

A New Phase

2011-09-13T08:57:00.005+10:00

She still looks full

radiating beams of light

like children’s pictures of the sun

but white, misty.

Last night I left all my crystals

out to catch that light.

Today I washed them

in running water,

laid them to dry on towels

and began dusting their shelves.

Confronting the moon

and myself

brings me to action.

My demon is called Escape.

But it’s Spring

and I’m tired of burying my head

even in poetry.

All that power

I’ve been storing and hoarding

and hiding

having reached its fullness

now demands an out.

Journalling my relationship with the moon: 17

Full Moon

2011-09-12T23:38:00.003+10:00

I walk out into a vista of peace.

She floats on a sea of cloud,

surprising me with her hushed beauty.

A milk-blue heaven spreads

from under my balcony roof

wide, and across to the mountains.

In my back yard courtyard

I find her again, high

in the centre of the sky.

Wisps of veiling drift over her face

as I blow her a kiss

and call the quarters.

Tonight I greet her alone.

He is in bed. He tires early now

and forgets our old, shared rituals.

When I said goodnight, I reminded him,

‘This is a night of power.

What shall I request for you?’

‘Health and strength?’ I prompted,

‘Love and happiness?’

‘All that,’ he said, and we laughed.

Then I grew serious.

‘Really, what do you want?’

‘Deep sleep,’ he replied, fervent.

And so I ask on his behalf

and for myself

I request courage.

Journalling my relationship with the moon: 16

Anniversary Moon

2011-09-12T01:36:00.006+10:00

The moon is above our tree

in a very dark sky.

On TV they are remembering

9/11, and the sun shining

in a very blue sky

that then turned night-dark.

It was morning here

when my friend Maureen

phoned and said, ‘Turn on the TV.

America’s been invaded!’

I yelled for Andrew to come

and banged on the door

of our guest Diane.

We huddled together on the sofa,

watching in silent shock

as the images played over and over

while lists of aeroplane passengers

ran along the bottom of the screen.

The day went weirdly slow

and I can’t remember

anything else we did.

Ten years later,

Andrew and I

watch on TV

the memorial ceremonies

and cry.

I get up and go outside

seeking the moon for comfort.

But the dark sky,

the black branches of the tree

and the small orb not quite full

fail to console.

Journalling my relationship with the moon: 15

30 Poems in 30 days: 11, memories of an historic event

Dreams

2011-09-11T23:17:00.004+10:00

Sept. 11 2011

I wake, full of

walking in my door

surprised to find

a large lamp

in the centre of the room.

Just delivered,

I’m informed —

in my dream,

still with me as I wake.

At the same time

Andrew, waking too,

sits up in bed, saying,

‘We have to make

a delivery today.

But I don’t know what

or to whom.’ I tell him,

‘It was a dream’

but he’s not so sure.

It worries him

half the morning.

He’s convinced

it’s very important.

I assure him

I don’t remember

any such necessity.

This does not

reassure.

Now I’m wondering too.

If we both dreamed

of deliveries, is there

something important

to remember

on this day?

Who or what

needs to be delivered

to or from what or whom?

30 Poems in 30 Days: 10, an arrival or delivery.

Day Moon

2011-09-10T18:30:00.004+10:00

She rests

big and fluffy

in the sunny sky

like a shapely cloud,

or a white balloon

left to dangle forgotten

after floating away

from the crowd.

Her head, held

at a sleepy angle,

ignores

or seems to miss

the two ducks

that start up suddenly

and fly across

her dreaming face,

and the small jet

powering above her

(perhaps so high

that it just looks little)

with the silver sparkle

radiating

from its slim body

of bright metal.

I too am out

in the clear afternoon

on this lazy, dozey,

pretty Spring day.

I too can wangle

some time for myself

just to be; then to scribble

of escape, of play.

30 Poems in 30 days, 9: a poem that includes at least three words that end with ‘gle’

Journalling my relationship with the moon: 14

Moon Journey

2011-09-10T12:08:00.003+10:00

She is travelling through Aquarius

and her outline is growing.

Her phases, though various,

repeat in a cyclical showing.

Her outline is growing

like a pregnant belly swelling.

They repeat in a cyclical showing,

the phases for our telling.

Her pregnant belly swelling,

she moves into Full Moon.

Her phases, for our telling,

are Maiden. Mother and Crone.

Moving into Full Moon

from bud to flower,

Maiden, Mother, and afterwards Crone

are degrees and kinds of power.

I am past bud and flower.

Through my phases (various)

my degrees and kinds of power,

I am now travelling thoughtful Aquarius.

Journalling my relationship with the moon: 13

Also submitted for dVerse FormForAll: Pantoum

An Ironic Moment

2011-09-09T23:00:00.005+10:00

When the former Great Leader

appeared on the Question and Answer show,

I tweeted disingenuously,

‘Why are they all clapping?’

A stranger replied,

‘Have you heard of respect, moron?’

‘Have you heard of sarcasm, idiot?’

I wanted to respond,

but I thought of the possible flame war

and chose restraint.

A few minutes later

a man in the live audience

threw his shoe at the former Great Leader.

30 Poems in 30 Days: 8, an ironic situation or moment

I should probably mention, for the benefit of the rest of the world, that this does NOT refer to the well-known George W. Bush incident but to a copy-cat event involving Aussie ex-PM John Howard.

Phases

2011-09-08T23:36:00.003+10:00

A mild clear night

after a warm day

of genuine Spring.

Down the front steps

I’m accompanied

by one of my cats.

Our street is quiet,

the three-quarter moon

high in the eastern sky.

Under my arm I carry

a bundle of old papers

for the recycle bin.

Brave Andrew!

He has thrown out

all his student notes.

He is in a waning phase

already, reducing

his circumference.

My slimming program

is succeeding, but

now my curves grow fuller.

In the moonlit garden

the tomatoes end

and the cacti plump.

Journalling my relationship with the moon: 11

Mountain Home

2011-09-08T22:13:00.005+10:00

‘You will travel north,’ the seer said,

‘to a bay in the great ocean.

If you look at the water, then turn

one hundred and eighty degrees,

you will face a strange-shaped mountain.

That will be the place of your home —

your new, your real, your destined home.’

And so it was to be, but first I came

just for a visit. My friend who lived here said,

‘There’s someone special I’ll take you to see.

Now close your eyes. Don’t open them

till I say.’ She wanted to drive me past the sign

that said Mt Warning. I opened my eyes only

when we reached the foot of the slope.

We climbed just a little way, enough for me

to meet the trees and the brush turkeys

and talk to the mountain herself. Tell me

all you like that the energy’s male. I say

it changes to masculine near the top. I spoke

with a Goddess that day, and all the other days.

I’ve never reached the top. I have no need.

I had met this mountain before, in meditations

when I lived far from here. I traversed in thought

her deep crystal pathways; discovered secrets.

‘She calls you,’ people told us when we moved

up from Melbourne to live in her vast Caldera.

‘Some she calls; others she spits out.’

I’ve seen that too. I don’t believe I’m one.

Eighteen years have passed quickly.

She has hosted Reiki Master initiations,

meditation groups, channellings,

and many solitary walks on her lower slopes

as well as presiding over Pagan rites.

She has moved me around her valleys,

a few years here or there, where I am needed.

But never too far from my source.

Now I’m close in, the closest I’ve been.

I’m told I have come to rest in my final home.

And it suits me. I walk out every day

and look at a ring of mountains, most of all

that great, strange-shaped mountain I belong to.

It began as seduction and became a marriage.

30 Poems in 30 Days: 7, a relationship with an inanimate object.

Gaps

2011-09-08T07:43:00.003+10:00

The moon makes a small white hole

in a square of unrelieved black

in the photo I took last night.

Just as there is a small absence now

in this household, since my son

left at the end of his visit.

I am regretful that I didn’t take a photo

of him, although of course I have

many new ones in my head.

One woman I know mistook him

for his younger brother, who

was here a few years ago.

I kept seeing the many contrasts

between them, thankful for

one sane and loving son.

Thankful for his bright point of light

against the empty darkness

of that other old sorrow.

Journalling my relationship with the moon: 11

Hatred

2011-09-08T01:09:00.000+10:00

Hating is easy. I do it seldom

and thoroughly. What is hard

is to bring yourself back

from that slow poison

after decades, when already

your limbs are twisting and crippling

and the spreading corrosion

eats your face from the inside.

I know about hate. Gave my stepmother

thirty years of it. If thoughts could kill....

There were reasons. There are always

reasons. Then I saw that it made me ill.

The poison was all through me,

ice in my veins. Gradually

I was becoming frozen.

It didn’t seem to be harming her.

I had to let it go. Remarkable

what you can manage

when it means choosing life.

I suppose I could have decided

to hate the alcohol instead,

but I wasn’t convinced she wasn’t

a sadist anyway, even before that.

And I like a nice wine.

They tell me she must have been

one of my greatest teachers.

On the soul level, they say,

we must have arranged all this

between us, her and me. If so

I did a very good job of forgetting.

All I know is, I stopped hating.

That’s it, though. I can’t like her.

30 Poems in 30 Days: 6, hating someone or something.

Unfamiliar Territory

2011-09-06T09:38:00.001+10:00

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

30 Poems in 30 Days: 5, An impossible event

The Nature of Energy

2011-09-06T01:23:00.007+10:00

We’re in an after-lunch discussion,

Andrew, Marian, David and me,

about the nature of energy, the way

that it works, how it doesn’t matter

what name or explanation you give,

the underlying principles are the same.

There must be a trade, we agree,

when asking for favours. The balance

must be kept; you can’t have a vacuum.

So I remember, when I get home

I must pick fresh flowers for Brigid.

She’s been generous with the poems.

I snip two pink geraniums, four big leaves,

and choose the heavy green glass vase

that Earl and Roberta gave me long ago

when they were still married, and I

was with Bill — a gift, you see, from poets.

I stand it before Her picture on my desk.

Later I walk out under the darkening sky

for mundane reasons, and there

unexpected, unlooked-for, the moon

half full, floats above my clothesline

looking like a slice of lemon for a drink.

After all these nights of absence! Easy

and casual as if it was no big deal, as if

she’d never been hidden. ‘I am at peace
with the world,’ says Andrew. So am I.

Journalling my relationship with the moon: 10

The Door of Heaven

2011-09-05T00:39:00.002+10:00

The door of Heaven

opens one tiny crack

revealing not the moon

but a single star

close to where

by my reckoning

the moon should be.

I know my night skies.

I remember the Gulf —

lying back on the deck

of the trailer-sailor,

awed by a sky wide open

displaying not only moon

but every star

and the travelling satellite

tiny and pale,

the fine web

of the Milky Way

in intricate detail, and sweet

familiar constellations.

Now I am sheltered

by mountains, tucked

in a blanket of cloud.

A door begins to open.

Journalling my relationship with the moon: 9

30 Poems in 30 Days: 4, a door opening or closing

Journeys

2011-09-04T08:32:00.002+10:00

A very small journey —

only two steps down

into our back garden

to look for the moon.

As usual, the sky

was covered in cloud

but on the dark ground

something shone white.

A patch of radiance

as if the moon had fallen,

rounded full — ah, but she

is still making that journey.

Gradually I understood:

a baby white rabbit

lying utterly still, soft

like a feathered dove.

And my black cat

wanting to go back out

after only just coming in,

unaware of wrongdoing.

My son, visiting, wrapped it

in an old towel, in a box.

We’ll show respect, he said,

but the family need not look.

Tomorrow morning

I have a longer journey —

across the road with the box

to talk to the children there.

Journalling my relationship with the moon: 8

(Yes, I’m ahead of myself; more poems than lunar days, so far.)

30 Poems in 30 Days, 3: Travel

Moon and the Stars

2011-09-03T22:47:00.004+10:00

The moon moves

through Scorpio

my sun sign,

also my moon sign.

What does this mean?

No astrologer,

I recall that yesterday

I felt strong and easy.

I picture us

dancing together

she behind her veils,

me swirling proudly.

By tonight she’ll be

in Sag, my rising sign

and still, most likely,

playing hide-and-seek.

Journalling my relationship with the moon: 7

Clouded Moon

2011-09-03T08:58:00.006+10:00

Walk outside

down the steps

to a full view of the sky.

Stand still

look up

in the right direction.

Once again

fail to see

the glowing white orb you love.

Knowing

she’s there

blow a kiss anyway.

See: this practice

is becoming

a ritual of keeping faith.

Journalling my relationship with the moon: 6

30 Poems in 30 Days: 2, steps in a process

'Ah, Moon of My Delight'

2011-09-02T09:05:00.004+10:00

rising whether I see you or not

and riding the sky until dawn

how many nights I found you

gazing in at my window

your white face hovering

above my childhood bed

when I first loved you, and

instinctively drew you down

or later over my desk

companioning the poems

and now, at dark and full,

the one I salute with a kiss

the one I sing to, dance for,

to whom I tell my stories

and still you bring your beauty

softly into my garden

lighting the secret way

between the clouds and stars

Journalling my relationship with the moon: 5

30 poems in 30 days: 1, a love poem not about romantic love.

Faces Seen and Unseen

2011-09-01T22:51:00.009+10:00

Ned Kelly’s bones

have been identified

from an archaeological dig

at old Pentridge Prison —

torn down in 1997.

The boys I knew there, poets,

named High Security

‘the dark side of the moon’.

Ned’s bones were found

in a box in a mass grave.

DNA proved them his.

His skull is still missing.

The moon, too,

remains hidden

again tonight, behind

the heavy rain clouds.

She has seen it all before:

young men with guns

who dream of being heroes

and die on the end of a rope.

And I, how calmly, contemplate

Ned’s known and living face

and another, far less famous.

‘Such is life.’

Journalling my relationship with the moon: 4

Note: Aussies know, but for the benefit of others: Ned Kelly's
last words, just before they hanged him, were, 'Such is life.'

I am submitting this piece for the current dVerse Critique and Craft session. This was a difficult poem to write and has personal allusions without a lot of detail. I am wondering how well it succeeds.

Growing

2011-08-31T13:51:00.002+10:00

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

2011-08-31T08:58:00.001+10:00

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

Safe Starting PLaces

2011-08-30T22:33:00.001+10:00

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

2011-08-29T21:43:00.003+10:00

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

Journalling My Relationship with the Moon

2011-08-29T09:38:00.000+10:00

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.

Violence

2011-08-25T07:22:00.002+10:00

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

Texture

2011-08-21T21:16:00.001+10:00

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

2011-08-20T08:42:00.008+10:00

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

2011-08-17T12:59:00.005+10:00

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

2011-08-16T00:01:00.002+10:00

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

2011-08-14T11:21:00.009+10:00

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

2011-08-13T09:54:00.006+10:00

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

2011-08-12T18:02:00.003+10:00

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.

A Hope

2011-08-11T13:27:00.009+10:00

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

2011-08-05T22:59:00.003+10:00

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?

Quietly Surprising

2011-07-31T09:02:00.002+10:00

(Found poem: Cryptic crossword clues)

One enters

very quietly

the final conduit

quiet knock

Len returning

with bits of broken shell

nice to come back

into quiet, first-rate court area

the French shelter

outside the open atrium

with a kind of concealed energy

the boy it brings back

makes hand signals in water surges

surprising boy dancer

a pro, he is faultless.