My November Gift

(Another Robert Frost Challenge – except that it isn't quite. I only have a "Selected" Frost and haven't seen the original of this particular title. It's actually "My November Guest" but my mind kept reading it as "Gift" so I went with that.)

It was life, it was me,
it was the world opening,
a blossom before my eyes
or a window onto a view
or the door to outside.

Life was me, I
was the world, and
the whole world
came alive!

I was born in November.
I was born on the twelfth,
and I always knew
in some mystic way,
that was my day
Johnny Mathis remembered
singing “The Twelfth of Never”
(voice of a fallen angel
rich, sad, hauntingly sweet).
"And that's a long, long time."
And I love November,
month full of grace
full of splendour,
the month that will never
burn down to an ember.

I was born into spring
and renewal, that soft
Tasmanian spring,
late spring when it starts
toward summer, turning
more and more golden,
warming to boundless blue.

I was born on a Sunday.
Mum used to say:
“The child that is born
on the Sabbath day
is bonny and wise
and good and gay!”
(Gay meaning joyous
in those old days.)
I was born to good fortune
and every November
candles are lit, there is cake,
there are gifts, everyone singing.

I was born
into life, and that is the gift
and the world is a great gift
still, and I like after all
the gift of myself to me.
Now I look back, I see
the adventure I’ve been
this long, long, exciting time.

18/7/08

Into My Own

My place is a small island.
There are many islands,
most of them warmer,
good to explore,
but the one I return to
always in heart and mind
is the one where I was born.

I cannot lose this island.
I hold it within me,
leaf and stone. Now
as I start to be old,
I visit more often – or no,
the island visits me.

I thought it was calling,
I thought I hungered
to walk its earth again,
but when I looked, I saw
there is no more need.

I am always there,
swimming below The Bluff
or rounding that little bend
in Burnie, where deep pink flowers
cascade over a low fence.

I’m climbing with my book
to sit in the fork of the black wattle.
I’m tramping with my staff
through the bush behind The Gorge,
and the nature spirits
move with me.

Yellow roses bloom
in my father’s garden,
and I fall asleep
hearing, like an “All’s well”,
the chimes of the Town Hall clock.

15/7/08

My Crowded Solitude

(Wednesday Challenge: crowd poem)

The veil wears thin.
Last night a man I didn’t know
walked past me through the living room.
Just visible against the air,
he gave no sign of seeing me.

Short and squat and slightly hunched,
he was wearing a camel shirt
under a red wool vest.
Was he perhaps a gnome or leprechaun?
He looked purposeful, busy.

The night before, as I wrote
a poem for my dead friend Anna,
gone these sixteen years,
I felt her draw close to my side.
I had the impression she was still dazzling.

Most days, the cats have spates
of chasing invisible somethings
all around the house – between the chairs,
up over the boxes in the garage –
whatever-it-is staying, obviously, just out of reach.

Sometimes a group of lights
dances and swoops across my vision,
bright, white-blue, zig-zagging
in unison like connected lightning bolts.
I believe they’re sylphs. I tell no-one.

10/7/08

Vacation

I could use one.
The Universe has given me
one broken toe,
a big black splinter
in the same foot
which bled when I pulled it out
(the foot not the splinter)
and now I have to walk on
the sore spot – right on the ball!
(I don’t think so, ha ha,
not if you mean me.)
I keep bumping
the toe that I broke.

My little toe.
I look at the metaphysics.
“The little ones.”
Those fights with my son?
A sibling’s death?
But think — it’s on the left side.
Perhaps my direction …
spiritual direction.
Oh, what am I doing wrong?
All of it, probably,
every damn thing.
I bash myself
mentally as well.

My friends tell me,
“You need to slow down and relax!
You were running.
Stop going so fast,
that’s the message.
You hit a wall in the dark?
So quit rushing about.”
Can it be so darn simple?
Is that all I have to do?
Are my guides yelling, “Stop!”?
Well, it’s like I said.
A vacation.
I sure could use one.

3/7/08

Somewhere it's snowing: haiku and things for June 2008

3/6/08:

Poems from the desert
light the silence and distance
as stars the night sky.


6/6/08:

A line of footprints
emerges from the desert.
Or do they lead in?


8/6/08:

Even now a man
is walking around a stupa
reciting prayers,
the other side of the world.
And some, I know, are for me.


13/6/08:

Soft autumn sunshine
after a night of soft rain.
My new rose grows tall.


20/6/08:

An invading wind.
60-foot mountain laurel
suddenly shattered
twists off at one-third its height,
leaving a blank, empty sky.


22/6/08:

I breathe in deeply
the scent of dew on the grass
as the moon rises.


27/6/08:

A night of deep cold.
We pile on more thick blankets.
Somewhere it's snowing.

Shadorma

This week's Wednesday prompt was to write a Shadorma – a 6-line Spanish syllabic form with a pattern of 3/5/3/3/7/5 syllables per line. And they can be linked to form several verses of one poem.

Here are some:


Silk Painting

Nine candles,
a lifted chalice.
Dancing flames
make letters
that light a candelabra,
on a field of silk.


Harvest

Late summer,
festival of light …
Lughnasad,
love that word.
Love the idea of fires
leaping, hill to hill.


The Way

The lost key
out of the old door,
never found,
lately missed,
became a symbol to her
of all the locked ways.

So it was
she never explored
a new path,
never tried
a different opening,
not ever.

27/6/08

(Last Wednesday's prompt was to write an 'invasion' poem. I wrote mine as a tanka, which will be included in the June haiku on Haiku Page of the Passionate Crone.)

You're the Reason I ...

Wednesday prompt: Write a poem on 'You're the reason I (blank).' You decide what the blank is and who the 'you' is.

I'm late with this one. Didn't get it written until Sunday; then had to let it sit awhile after much tweaking, before I could see if there was more work to be done.


I think of a strange desert,
and you’re the reason.
Wild wolves and coyotes
lurk outside your cave.
The dog-wolf you claimed as protector
cowers beside you, afraid.
But you are not afraid.

You write of wandering,
of meeting the earth
on the earth’s terms.
(I steal your words
that entered my head
with the force of truth.)
You are learning, you say,
in small steps.

Beyond the far edge
of the vast Pacific
and further, deep inland,
you sit at a public computer
on a brief visit to town.
Time is short, but you find
enough to send one message.

Here in Australia
the desert is harsh.
It kills people.
Strangers it kills quickly.
We’re taught early:
“Don’t leave the road.
And if you break down,
don’t leave the car.”

There are no wolves
and very few caves.
This is no country for wandering.
How can I imagine where you are?
You mention a mountain, a stupa.
You plan a pilgrimage.

You’re the reason I play
with these contrasts,
waiting today for customers
at my stall in a cold market.
The wind-chill defeats
the clear sky, the climbing sun
bright silver through the trees.

I huddle in my jacket
of black wool,
pulling it around me closer.
The last of the summer tourists
went home weeks ago.
The locals, with dazed faces,
totter past in the wind.
It’s not a buying day.

You’re not the only reason
I’m dreaming of heat
and other places!
But you are the reason
I turn in my dreams
to an unfamiliar corner
of New Mexico.

And I think you move and travel
in the country of your soul –
as I in my tropics, despite
the shock of even a short winter,
am also right at home.
Yet, you’re the reason I wonder
what other lives and dreams may be,
what landscapes unexplored.

15/6/08

My Death

(Wednesday prompt: write a poem about your own death.)

The tunnel, the light,
the rushing wind,
the dim shapes glimpsed
as I glide past;
then the emergence
into a garden;
the love pouring
from the pure, radiant
source of the light,
and all that singing …
no, perhaps not.

A fragment, expanding
like widening ripples
to merge with the All,
one golden spark
rejoining the great fire,
finding my place
in the whole
consciousness of God,
attaining full knowledge,
full being … nah,
save that for later.

Heavens and Nirvanas
don’t entice me;
rather let me fly
airy, light and free,
to move at whim
between deserts and oceans,
mountains and rivers,
islands, waterfalls,
villages, cities …
let the world be my eternity,
my home.

5-7/6/08

What is to be said? – haiku and things for May 2008

2/5/08

Samhain

Black night with no moon.
The veil thins between the worlds.
What ghosts are about?


9/5/08:

Sunlight on water.
Like the sound of Basho's frog,
its ripples widen.



16/5/08:

A butcher bird lands
next to a clump of deep red leaves.
The sun glints on both.


Native Hibiscus

What is to be said?
The flowers' wide yellow mouths
are strangely silent.

Petals curling back
reveal the deep red centres
like velvet, or blood.


23/5/08:

I wake up crying.
He dries my tears with kisses
one soft on each eye.



30/5/08:

Morning.
Cold rain falling
endlessly.


© Rosemary Nissen-Wade 2008

Market forces

(Wednesday prompt: a poem about commerce.)

Work
in order
to earn leisure

trade
that leisure
for greater wealth

or
choose otherwise
poverty as freedom

but
money's freedom
so I've heard

no
money is
in fact power

knowledge
is power
get it right

so
trade money
to buy knowledge

then
trade knowledge
for more money

why
does it
seem so circular

why
do I
smell a trap?

A Boy's Will

(The next title in the Robert Frost Challenge)

A boy's will; how would I know that?
But I look at boys I've known
and think they probably didn't
will what they now have.

A child who ran towards life
ran everywhere, head up
laughing – how did he
become at sixty-four
the self-confessed curmudgeon
squinting into his glass?

The one who went exploring
into the bush at four,
who raced billycarts and scaled fences
and stole things, and always survived ...
what covered his scabby knees
in such conservative grey?

The tot with the owl glasses,
tiny astride a cannon,
but smiling safe and proud
beside his big brother and dad,
who dreamed of making his own pictures
with a camera – not words –
now spends all day writing,
except when his white head rests.

And the two I knew the best,
or thought I did?
That other child of laughter
other daredevil climber
loved stories of heroes with swords.
He spends his life at a desk.

The younger, with the smile
that got him whatever he wanted,
thought of a life on boats
and a perfect woman.
He travels by land and sky;
he travels alone.

These stories are not all sad.
Early desires change.
But a boy's will, what's that?
Peter Pan leaps and is gone.

Left: Boy 1. Right: Boys 1 and 2:

Boy 3 (Right):

Boy 4:

Boy 5: