Asked to Write on Gravity, I Find Myself Unable

It's Spring in Northern Rivers

and the jacaranda's out.

The sky is wide light blue,

the ocean's warming up.

The boys are in their singlets,

displaying their tattoos.

The girls are in their pretties

with short and floaty skirts.

The breeze is fresh and playful.

I'm eating fish and chips.

The only kind of gravity

I'm conscious of today

is that which holds me to this ground

where I am glad to be.

The Midweek Motif at Poets United this week is Gravity.

(I'm calling this a 'sonnet variant' because, while it's not one of the recognised sonnet forms, neither is it free verse exactly – and it does have some sonnet features.)

Listening

Soft rain will fall this morning.

Already, clouds are whitening all the air.

There is a hush on the trees,

the gentle ripple of their leaves too slight

for sound to happen yet.

Poised and waiting still

the earth is readying for sustenance.

Slowly, birds arouse

with flutterings and anxious little cheeps.

The leaves begin to rustle.

I too have a thirst.

Yet I too hesitate, and pause awhile.

To open to the boundless

cannot, surely, be a hasty thing,

must not be impatient?

Or can it – must it – be?

Perhaps, to slake that deep, that inner thirst,

I should be open-mouthed

and all my body taut with urgency

for the soft rain to fall.

I write this (way ahead of time!) to my own prompt for Poets United's Midweek Motif for Sept 16: "'Let your song be delicate' – or not." I give people a choice, but personally am attempting delicacy (in case you couldn't tell).

Early Spring

Lorikeets swoop in and out of my bottlebrush.

I went for my first walk of Spring today,

though Winter isn’t officially gone.

Ah, but it feels over!

A pink camellia blooms on my neighbour’s bush.

Bougainvillea starts across the way.

The nature strips up the hill and my lawn
are dotted with balls of clover.

A 55-word poem for flash 55 at 'imaginary garden with real toads'. 

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 

We Used to Walk

We used to walk here to this table

above the creek, take notebooks out

and pens of course, companionable,

we sat just here together, wrote

by trees and water: calm delight.

I see, returning to the spot,

it’s been repainted, this old table....

We used to walk

for twenty minutes, rest in quiet

right here beside the creek, and write.

Now here again alone, I’m able

to view the place at last — oh, sweet! —

we used to walk.

Submitted for dVerse Form for All: the Rondeau

Pottsville Beach, Late Afternoon

30 Poems in 30 Days: Day 17
Write a poem that is set at or near where you live.

The shoreline is utterly altered after the storms
but summer is coming, we can get to the beach again.
Someone has partly restored the path that became a cliff
easing it into a soft hill of sand we can trudge down and up.
Others are here already, walking or fishing.

The waves come in now in opposing directions
turning on each other like the edge of half a whirlpool.
The shallows are all uneven; in places huge licks extend
reaching nearly to the foot of the cliff, in far beyond the rest.
This is a sea I don’t want to turn my back on.

But I do while I fossick for stones in the slush:
interesting shapes, beautiful colours, satisfying textures.
Here is a comma and here a heart. Some are marked with crosses
others circled by raised, contrasting rings. One is a pearl, translucent white,
others are black and smooth, shining like onyx.

Then everyone stops. We all stand still and gaze.
I’d heard two days ago there were whales about, seen
from the headland at Hastings Point, and now they are here
disporting themselves in leisurely ease, back behind the breakers,
cresting and diving, leaping and plunging.

A glimpse of graceful tail, a curving fin or a snout,
a sudden spume of white, a burst of foam. A silver glint
from the underside of a fin caught by the sun. And the sky vast,
pastel blue with long white feathery stripes of cloud stretching across.
The ocean sparkled, seeming to sing.