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

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

23 October 2017

Petals and Thorns

They burn, oh!
my petals burn

light has elapsed 

only these briars
glow eerily now

the setting sun
reddens the thorns,
their pointed tips

in the garden –
a garden enclosed
in dying light –

my petals flame.


Written for Micro Poetry ~ Binding with Briars at 'imaginary garden with real toads', and for facebook's The Poetry of Three. (Inspired – loosely – by Blake's 'The Garden of Love'.)


Published in HAVE YOUR CHILL, July 2018.

19 October 2017

Full Moon, Dark Moon

The Full Moon
huge and golden
seemed to bounce
to our rhythm
as we rode
that tiny motorbike, 
hired from strangers,
fast and eager
alongside the paddies –
to make love
our first time,
in dreamy Bali.

Many months later,
back in Melbourne,
I heard you
that last time –
riding away forever,
further and further,
your own bike
large and purring
across the night,
while I lay 
awake, listening long,
at Dark Moon.


Written for Poets United's Midweek Motif ~ Dark Moon, New Moon

Also written for the facebook group THE POETRY OF THREE, Three Words Per Line

16 October 2017

My Favourite Metaphor for You

(courtesy of 'The Little Prince')


I didn't keep
the fox poster
that spoke of
you / our love /
your death, in
a secret language
made of images.

I had written
the fox poem.
I thought that
pain enough – more
would be wallowing 
but now seek
other fox pictures.

Their different landscapes
are immaterial. For
it's the fox
I crave, vivid
against any backdrop,
coming towards me
shy yet purposeful....

Bit by bit
I tamed you
with my words,
with my love;
but could, finally, 
not save you
from the hunters.

Written for The Poetry of Three facebook group.

Joining This Site

(Poetry of Three)


'You do know
this is not
a dating site?'

How I laughed!
Yes. Anyway, I'm 
not looking, thanks.

All the same,
a sweet fantasy:
partnering through poetry.

How utterly romantic,
if somewhat old-fashioned.
But after all –

there is that
obligatory number three.
No, better not.

Just think of
those messy, eternal 
triangles we'd generate.


'Poetry of Three' in which each line must have three words (no other restrictions) is a facebook group I just joined. They asked several leading questions including this one before accepting my application – and fair enough too, but this one did amuse me.

When I Came Here (Shadorma)

When I came
to this place of trees
their welcome
embraced me
and when I lay in your arms
enfolded us both.

Written for 'imaginary garden with real toads': Fussy Little Forms: Shadorma.

12 October 2017

Return Journey?

"How was it, coming back
after hard adventures, 
to normal?"
                     I've never 
known normal. My path leads 
ever on; a wild track.

8 October 2017

Games Cat

is chasing for toy,
dangling for toys.
Playmate must be me!

Solution one: there’s 
miaow. A try. Maybe even
(soon) me-against rubs.

Door. To - it - from: circles.
Chair (my): around she prowls.

Myself, I won’t risk the Her.
(Health / ill conflict ... as
food would relieve it too.)

I think she’s me-like.
She thinks me her-like.

Outside’s wet. It is.
Bored is She.

Although people enjoyed my recent poem Cat Games (because many people love cats) I myself soon came to the conclusion it was banal and boring. Under the influence of Carmen GimĂ©nez Smith's chapter, 'An Exercise in Derangement' in the book WINGBEATS II, I wrote it out backwards (incorporating two photo captions from that earlier post) and needed very few further changes to arrive at what I hope is a more dynamic poem.

7 October 2017

In the House of Love


In the house of love 
I am but a decoration. 
I hang on the wall, 
ignored for the most part. 

When anyone does notice, 

they smile. I am pretty. 
But I count for nothing. 

I would like to be a book, 

that people would open and read, 
exchange thoughts with. 

I would like to be a spoon, 

to be dipped into food and brought back 
full of nourishment and sweet tastes. 

But I am a mere decoration, 

useless, unnecessary, 
with nothing important to do. 

Occasionally someone dusts me off. 

No-one ever applies polish. 
No-one ever takes a photo. 

They moved the mirror opposite; 

now I am even forgetting what I look like. 
I cannot see myself. I cannot hear myself. 
Perhaps I will cease to exist.


This is a fictional character, NOT autobiographical! Written in response to a prompt in a writing group, which consisted of the first two lines of this poem. They are from a piece of writing by Kyminy Cricket.


Linked to Poets United's Poetry Pantry #376

I Sing

I sing softly and sadly
I sing sadly and softly

I sing in the middle of your delight
and at the edge of your last anguish

I sing as if the day would never end
I sing slowly at midnight and quickly at dawn

I sing to the wind and the stars and the dark
I sing to the treetops and to their trunks

I sing to small frogs in the rainwater pipe
also to the bees that visit my clover

I sing in the cities, among their towers
I sing in rainforests and alongside rivers

I sing with the sea and with thunder
with jagged rocks and rising mountains

I sing in the language of a cat
and in the colours of a butterfly

in the pouring rain I sing
in the burning sun I sing

I will never stop singing

6 October 2017

The Ground from Under

You are falling roses,
you are patches of darkness,
you are words unspoken.

Into the gashes between
your forms and seemings 
I plummet. Cliff walls are stone.

How can now an arrival
happen, let alone pertain?

Black and bloody, drifting,
I consign me to endless.

Slightly Broken

Slightly broken by being 
so deeply misunderstood
(divine light fractured
lying spilled on the roadway)
I crawl off into invisible.

Mixing with grass and scrub
and thick leaf-litter, lacy fragments,
torn off, remain briefly. Soon 
the weather will turn them into
part of the earth and the air.

Resting alone tempts the wounded
into further silence. Today
you become far away, you become 
the nothing you would make
of me. And I am merely gone.

4 October 2017

Pretty Pierette

Some people hate clowns,
think them murderous 
with wide, round, staring eyes 
and crazy grins.

I, myself, despised
the lumbering, stupid
circus clowns of my childhood.
Then I found these others.

Now I am in love
with the clowns from the Carnival,
their patterned costumes,
their shapely masks.

Here at my left hand, overlooking 
the desk whereon I make poems,
there sits the loveliest of all –
a gift from a knowing friend.

Her white porcelain hands and face,
her elaborately painted eyes,
her bows and bells and glitter
show me she is beautiful but sad.

I know sad. Those frozen tears
on her blank, helpless face
remind me. They are for love lost:
remembering a different beauty.


















Written for Poems of Garden Gnomes. The prompt: to write about whatever is just out of reach of one's left hand.

Also linking to Poets United's Poetry Pantry #389

2 October 2017

Cat Games

She is bored.
It's wet outside.
Like me, she thinks
to relieve it with food,
but I don't inflict on her
the ill-health I risk for myself.

She prowls around my chair,
circles from it to the door,
rubs against me; soon
may even try a miaow.
There's one solution: 
I must be playmate.














Toys for dangling
















Toy for chasing


Exercise: 55 words (excluding title)

Also linking to Monday Writes #125 and to Midweek Motif – Animals at Poets United

A Conversation with My Late Husband

He tells me, "You need 
male energy around you. It's OK
if you have new relationships. Later, 
we'll be together forever. 
But for now ..."

"Listen," I say, "I like 
being with me now. (And 
with you, still so present in spirit.)
For the rest, my little cat
is my new love, my sweet, my treasure."


Exercise: 55 words (excluding title)

Promises

I signed, 'Love forever'. He replied:
'Forever is a long time to love. How about, 
Love – as long as you're still
the person you are today.'
(It was a promise, not a question.)

He died soon after. 
Decades later, 
love appears to be forever ...
after all, he is still 
the person he was that day.


Exercise: 55 words (excluding title)

Re-reading Martin Pippin*

I have been rambling for days
in an apple orchard and a daisy field, 
in the fine company of Martin Pippin
(introduced to me by Eleanor Farjeon).

I was a lonely girl, unlike those
who stopped their play to hear these tales –
yet my childhood too, I recollect,
had its daisy chains, its golden apples. 



* "Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard" and "Martin Pippin in the Daisy Field" by Eleanor Farjeon: classics still available in print and as ebooks.

Written for a 55-word prompt.