Loops and Bends and Undercurrents

He lies at my feet, my devoted dog

in his guise as a big black cat,

his second incarnation with me in this life.

When he was a dog, he was big then too.

People joked that he was really a horse.

He was gentle and fierce, as he is now.

It is evening again, and the birds are squealing.

Since morning the hills have developed a haze.

I’ve been meditating a poem, here on my veranda.

The street is still quiet, except for those birds.

(Noisy Miners, well named.) Today is a holiday.

I don’t know which one, and I don’t care.

Maybe the State declared it because the Rabbitohs,

the battlers’ team, just made history — their first win

since ‘71. I know that’s not so, but what a day to party.

The boy and me, we don’t really follow footy,

but he does watch TV of a night, lying beside me

on the couch. I wonder what he thinks he sees and hears.

‘Find your own voice,’ said the poetry Maestro (that name

an old joke between us). I let mine meander. It becomes

ever more discursive and rambling. The lines lengthen

like evening shadows. I wonder if it was shaped

by my childhood among those leisurely rivers

and expansive mountains. I have them here too.

How deceptively they stretch and curl. Children,

enjoy your summer! The breeze and the swimming
are beautiful. Watch out for undertow, snags, and deep holes.

31 Poems in 31 Days (Poewar / Writer's Resource Center) Prompt: Meditate, then write.

Surveying the Scene

So here I am again on the top step

in the evening air, and those birds

with yellow eyes are shrieking

to drive me away, but She stands

and speaks, and the birds go away instead.

I wasn’t going to come out here.

The days are getting hot now

and I’d sooner lounge inside. But She

brought wine and sat in that chair

by the door, then coaxed me out.

The truth is, I don’t know what I want.

There are days when I hardly eat,

just can’t get interested in food at all.

There are days I’m so damn hungry

no amount could fill my emptiness.

I visit the spots in house and garden

where my sister liked to prop. The spare bed

with the sun coming through the blind.

The half-hidden space among the bushes

cosy as a nest, with its natural camouflage.

Sometimes it helps to curl up there, in the places

my sister made. But then it feels wrong,

so I pace and miaow, restless and cross.

I cry and insist, but I’m not sure for what,

and call my Person to me over and over again.

My Person — is She top cat now, or am I?

I think we take it in turns. When I call

She comes obediently to sit awhile, stroke and talk,

but She doesn’t know how to help me. At times
I help her. I pat her with my paw, very, very gently.

31 Poems in 31 Days (Poewar / Writer's Resource Center) Prompt: A Persona poem utilising one of the last two prompts as well. (I guess it's obvious I chose Place.)

It's a Sunny Spring Day

I swing down Byangum Road,
swooping around the hilly bends

which are now familiar.

Can it be so long already

I’ve lived this side of town?

My friend’s new house,

eight minutes away,

is at the top of a hill

in a quiet cul-de-sac

lined by tranquil trees.

I don’t drive down

to park in her garage.

The next door neighbour

is getting new furniture in.

There wouldn’t be room.

I pass her driveway, turn

in the wide end of the street

where the school yard begins,

deserted on Saturday afternoon,

come back to stop by her fence.

Later, when she sees me out,

the slim old man, her neighbour,

comes across to greet me, hesitates.

“Have I met you?’ he says.

I explain briskly, smiling.

I drive home by Riverview.

A bright, slender, yellow gorse

interrupts the evergreens.

She texts me, “What did you think?

Should I be setting boundaries?”

I tell her, ”He was confused.

I remember my Dad like that

in the very early stages.” 

I arrive at the top of my own hill,

my own tree-lined cul-de-sac.

31 Poems in 31 Days (Poewar / Writer's Resource Center). Prompt: Place 

Trending on Twitter

Ebola is a pretty word;

it skips like lilting laughter.

It could be one of those fancy names

you’d give your baby daughter.

A pretty word, an ugly thing,

this new disease Ebola.

You will hear a lot of it

before you get much older.

That’s IF you get much older, see?

They tell me it’s a killer

escaped into the community —

the worst kind of horror thriller.

The fear is rising all over the world,

or at least for those on twitter.

Ebola is the enemy:

a meanie, a hard hitter.

Yes it’s real and yes it’s nasty;

I don’t mean to disparage.

But can’t we note what we need to do

without this drama barrage?


31 Poems in 31 Days (from Poewar / Writer's Resource Center) Prompt: Trending

The Uncoupling

I saw him off on the train.

We hugged and cried.

His mates were there too

to wave him goodbye. 

We were fools, they said

to our tears; we should stop

this nonsense. But we knew

it was too wrong to make right.

Well he always wanted

to go live in Sydney. And I

wanted peace, I suppose,

and also passion. And truth.

We got those things

but not with each other.

Still, we didn’t begin

with intention to stop.

And so we wept to separate.

Next time I saw him,

eighteen months later,

was in the divorce court.

After it was done, we had coffee,

he and I and the man who would be

my next husband. Then he walked away
without looking back, and left us.

31 Poems in 31 Days (from Poewar / Writer's Resource Center). Prompt: Change of Mind

To My Child Self

Don’t go away!

You will need you as you grow.

Hide in a cave inside
if you must;

just don’t go.

Keep on playing

with your poems.

Keep drawing too, even though

people who don’t know

tell you you can’t — just play!

Remember to look

at flowers and fairies,

remember to talk to the trees.

Keep believing in magic.

Lift up your face to the breeze.

And one day,

when you are old,

you’ll be perfectly free

to come out and play all day. 
You will still be me.

Prompted by Poets United's Midweek Motif: Writing for Children 

I Gave Away My Books

I gave my books to my mother,

though I didn’t know that I did.

When she and my dad split up,

I took just a few to the other home,

across the Strait, where I would live

for the next two years, during school terms,

with him and the new stepmother.

I was 15 then, so I left

all my childhood treasures —

Grimm, Hans Christian, Arthur Ransome,

oh, dozens more — crammed

in the cupboard beside my bed

in Mum’s new house, where I visited

for long, glorious, holiday summers;

took them out, stroked them, re-read.

I grew. University,

and then marriage.

Still the visits home to Mum.

‘I should take my books,

have them with me.’

‘Don’t,’ my mother said.

‘If you leave them here, I’ll know

you’re always coming back.’

Why did she doubt?

It was the other so-called home

to which I never returned

once I got clean away.

But I left them there, to please her,

knowing I would return

every year at Christmas.

Until that one year

I looked for my books

and found them gone.

‘I didn’t think you wanted them,’

she said. ‘You left them here so long,

squashed inside that cupboard.

Obviously you outgrew them

years and years ago.’

I gave my books to my mother,

gave them into her keeping,

until they were not kept.

When I was 60, I went to England.

There I found at last

a rare unexpurgated Grimm

to replace the one she got rid of.

The rest have not been replaced.

Beginning the '31 poems in 31 Days' challenge by John Hewitt of Poewar (aka Writer's Resource Center) — who, some years ago, got me started on these things. 

Prompt: Something you gave away as a child (or, at the end of childhood)

Also linking to Poets United's Midweek Motif: Children's Books

Our Shadows: Erotic haiku September 2014

our shadows

cast by the lantern
rise and fall

******

smoke tendrils

curling past my face

his long hair

******

moving in rhythm

lost in the rhythm

we are the rhythm


These were written as separate haiku, but they refer to the same occasion and could be read as one poem.

I am submitting them, on 22 Feb. 2015, to Poets United's Poetry Pantry #240. 

Ghosting

Sitting at my desk,

I feel the gentle flick

of a furry tail brushing my leg.

Both cats have always liked

to get my attention that way.

But the one who is still alive

lies across the room

in front of the heater.

He hasn't stirred all evening.

So I know who.

As I clean the kitchen bench

close to the time for cat dinner,

right above the spot of floor

on which that dinner is served,

I hear behind me a tiny mew.

I recognise it. Enquiry.

Encouragement. The nightly 

reminder (as if I would forget).

'Yes, babe,' I say,
'But you're dead.'

As Time Goes By

So this is what it's like, being 74.

They start leaving,

the ones you love the best, or

the ones you thought

would always be there.

In fact they've been leaving for years,

but now you notice it more.

At home there are just we two

now; I am just an old lady

with her cat. How do you do?

I am the old witch with the black cat,

living invisibly next door to you.

In future years, will it come to that?
Already it's almost true.

The Water-Colour Sketcher

for Claudia Schoenfeld

In her heart is the music of light.

She doesn't worry

about capturing the exact, neat shape

of the cup with the blue flowers;

what she wants is that blue on that white,

and the half-moon swirl of the coffee

glimpsed over the rim.

She is after the blobby orange

of a sunset sky, or a pale lemon moon

reflected in dark water. Her Eiffel Tower 

curls back into distance

like a dancer abandoned to music.

Her motorbike riders, bright red,

rush towards me out of their street

and out of her picture; I see them 

swerve to miss me.

Everything's alive,

nothing is static.

It all sings.

Written in response to a dVerse prompt and the sketches of Claudia Schoenfeld. I was inspired by all rather than one. I would call her art impressionistic, and my response is very much the impression it made on me, with details jumping out from the collective effect. A quick impression — a closer look reveals there is only one rider on that bike; but never mind, I'll stay true to the first impression.