Sunlight and green leaves: haiku and things for Augst 2008

1/8/08

Sunlight and green leaves
the morning fresh and shining
outside my front door.


I look no further
than the view from my front door,
forgetting heaven.

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

This sunny morning
my fifteen-year-old potplant
has shiny new leaves.

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

The wind blew the clouds
into bright white angel wings
this warm afternoon.

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

In my sunny sky
new moon and solar eclipse
are invisible.



6/8/08

After some silence
you write that I am a song.
All day I'm singing.



8/8/08

Suddenly sunshine
still with a faint edge of cold
fills the morning sky.

OR:

Suddenly sunshine
with just a faint edge of cold
filling up the sky.



9/8/08

A field of corn rows

The further we go
side by side in parallel
the more we converge.

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

Lady of moonlight
who dances across the dew
you lighten our space.



10/8/08

Softer than moonlight
a wind like the rush of wings:
transparent shimmer.

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

Cucumber plant

Blooming in darkness
behind a sun-coloured pot
tiny yellow stars.



12/8/08

Frosty night up late
alone with my two cats
huddled shivering.



15/8/08

After the frost
the dawn of a clear day
the sky cloudless.



16/8/08

A time of extremes
warming one side of the globe
the other freezing.

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

Full moon and bright star
the night suddenly warmer.
I bathe in white light.

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

On nights of full moon
her silvery voice whispers
poems in my ear.

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



17/8/08

On these frosty nights
only the cats to curl up
sharing body heat.



18/8/08

Spanish Fiesta

Fireworks and costumes
elderly ladies dancing
to rockers' guitars.

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

In winter I walk
on a wild and lonely beach
gathering shells.



22/8/08

Dobbing in Hubby: senryu sequence

Elbow in the back.
Not my favourite waking.
Accident, he says.

New water bottle
dribbles all over his face.
He opened it wrong.

How can I tell him,
"In age, slowness is wisdom.
Do things mindfully!" ?

"Oh, poop to you too,"
he says when I read him this.
But he's laughing hard.

I rescue his plate
parked on the bed and tilting,
just before milk spills.


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

As I grow older ...

People around me
seem confused, acting strangely.
I'm hurt and puzzled.

(Don't panic, folks; it's not autobiographical!)

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

Such tangles behind
the only way is forward
through those dark thickets.



23/8/08

A MySpace challenge

syllable pattern 4-6-4
begin each verse with “after the storm”

after the storm
at first only silence
and no movement

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

after the storm
stillness lifts softly, birds
begin singing


29/8/08

1:05 a.m.

Already it’s Friday.
Bed now, to dream of haiku
and wake up to them.

***********************
When a dragonfly
goes to sleep in its last dream
it wakes as faery.


30/8/08

Here, our warm autumn
is not a dying season;
it’s rare that leaves fall.
The air itself seems golden,
summer departing slowly.

A Rant Poem

(Last Wednesday's challenge from Poetic Asides. Not sure this qualifies as a rant exactly, but it's all I've got.)

Dobbing in Hubby: senryu sequence

Elbow in the back.
Not my favourite waking.
Accident, he says.

New water bottle
dribbles all over his face.
He opened it wrong.

How can I tell him,
"In age, slowness is wisdom.
Do things mindfully!" ?

"Oh, poop to you too,"
he says when I read him this.
But he's laughing hard.

I rescue his plate
parked on the bed and tilting,
just before milk spills.

C***

It’s just like one of those weeds
that swallows insects.
And it’s hungry! It seeks to feed.
I’ll swear it reaches out with its big side-flaps
and stretches and sucks —
you can hear the air retreat
in front of its jet funnel,
its ruching of in-drawn petals.
It puckers to an arch kiss,
pouts, plops like a fish,
flops to a loose pocket.
It gapes, it salivates, it wants your juices.
You tickle its hairy leaves and it gasps —
you are so pretty.
You are a winged thing,
and here is this coarse slobberer —
stop, take pity!
Only stroke it. Watch how it widens.
Oh yes — it’s sticky! It grasps, fastens,
clamps: magnet.
And the fierce little eye in the middle
goes red, goes wild, throbs blindly, sizzles.

Bites, tightens till you shrivel.


© Rosemary Nissen-Wade 1974
from Universe Cat, Pariah Press (Melb.) 1985
First published (earlier version) Compass

The title – in case you haven't figured it out already – is a four-letter word meaning female genitalia. I don't usually censor it, but as this is a public space and I don't want Google removing my blog....
First written in 1974 and bravely published by Chris Mansell in the now-defunct literary magazine Compass, this was a famous poem in Australia for a while – and in some quarters infamous. It was universally referred to, both by those who loved it and those who hated it, as "THAT poem". Many people begged me to change the title to something more discreet or euphemistic, but I have always been convinced that this title is absolutely right POETICALLY.

I do believe it was the first "literary" piece of its kind, at least in this part of the world, where it inspired others to poems on the same and similar subjects. 

Submitted 6 July 2013 for Poets United's Verse First: Appetite

Dream Poem

(Wednesday prompt from Poetic Asides.)

Frosty night seeping
into my dreams.
Waking and freezing
I remember only
whimpering from cold
afraid and alone,
was that real?

Yet Another Poetry Challenge!

This was a challenge I found on Lori Williams's blog on MySpace, where she and others have posted some wonderful interpretations; do go have a look. The challenge was to write a poem incorporating the words:

NEIGHBOR
DYNAMISM
FREE-FOR-ALL
INDIO
LUSTER
BURN
JUICES
INFILTRATE
SCROTUM
MOTH

(Only in my case with Aussie spelling.)

I didn't know what Indio meant, but thought it would be fun to write the poem before finding out. It would have been a different poem had I known it is both a place in California where various festivals happen, and the professional name of Canadian singer/songwriter Gordon Peterson. But I didn't know and this is the poem that happened:


Journey From Indio

"Indio, what's that?" she said,
"A place?" He cocked one eyebrow,
scratching his scrotum idly.
"I've got better things
to think about," he said.

She gave him a long look
from under her lashes.
"You know," she said,
"You lack a certain …
dynamism." She smirked.
He gave a low growl.
"Ha! I can still get
your juices flowing."

He let his cigarette burn down
in the ashtray, unnoticed
except by a tiny moth
which immolated itself
on the last flare of red
before the glow faded.

He faced down her stare
and moved in, for what
the neighbour, unable
to infiltrate the play
of their surface hostilities,
liked to describe as
"next-door having another
free-for-all," hearing
in the shrieks and thumps
something quite other
than what was happening.

They liked that little edge
of aggression, you see,
to get them started.
It moistened their lips,
made their eyes shine,
added to each, for each,
a dangerous, exciting lustre.

15/8/08

Tanka

Two kookaburras
on my TV arial
laughing their heads off.
A black bat, wide-winged, swoops low.
They fly to the nearest tree.


(The Wednesday prompt this week was Marriage. This was not written in response to it but simply in response to the events described. Then I realised, these protagonists were definitely a couple!)

Cento Australiana

Wednesday challenge (many days late this week). A cento is a poem made up of lines by other poets.

I love a sunburnt country.
On her dark breast we spring like points of light,
morning’s first colour, curving to day’s end

the children screaming at the water’s edge with seagulls,
hearing the birds’ ancestral incantations
among the arid relics of old tide patterns.

Sometimes when summer is over the land
the harbour breaks up in thunders of sunlight
and a steep blue sky

as I feel the weight of light begin to bleach my feet
where seagulls rode upon the foam
and the hawk in the high sky hung.

January heat. Raw saplings stand like cattle
at high voltage summer noon.
Flies multiply in the heat.

The scrub is thick in the gully
with graceful curves of dried up streams,
lantana green smell on your hands.

Look at the sky! It’s ‘trying’ to rain;
this desert, blinding, unnamed
leaving us undefended as the stars.

Red rock forms sheltering walls
by a ring of worn river stones,
lightning-gutted remnants.

Walk into the memory of rain
the dream of grass
the glint of fronds and blades in the light

this hushed sun-haze morning,
turning over wet leaves with my walking stick;
green leaves – a patch of world along a river.

Because a little vagrant wind veered south from China Sea
slow drops of rain began to fall; the wind
suspended in the amber sky.

The moon had rippled past the hotel glass
and suddenly there was a presence.
Sniff the bougainvillea and you’re in the south pacific again the purple islands.

The East wind sucks itself along sea shelves
it blows all summer long like a bellows
great murmur of rain spreading over suburbs and into the hills.

At night, in each other’s arms, we touch the sun . . .
watching the rocks bleed lichen onto the snow.
I am rested and walk away, into the rolling dunes.


Australian poets (in above order):
Dorothea Mackellar
Judith Wright
Joyce Lee
Rosemary Dobson
Gwen Harwood
Bev Roberts
Bruce Dawe
Vincent Buckley
Rod Moran
Jennifer Rankin
Kristin Henry
Dorothy Hewett
Les Murray
Dorothy Porter
Tony Page
Barbara Giles
Michael Leunig
Chris Mansell
Susan Hampton
Barrett Reid
Shelton Lea
Wendy Poussard
Mal Morgan
Gary Catalano
Katherine Gallagher
Jennie Fraine
Roland Robinson
Philip Martin
Liz Hall-Downs
John Shaw Neilson
C.J. Dennis
Oodgeroo Noonuccal
David Campbell
Pi O
John Kinsella
Michael Dransfield
Maie Casey
Bridget Porter Oldale
Judith Rodriguez
David Malouf
Doris Leadbetter
Jenny Boult (aka M.M. Bliss)

Younger Stepson

We met at Christmas.
I guess you’d heard
there was someone new
in your father’s life.

You kissed me shyly on the cheek
and included me
in the present for your Dad:

scented bath salts.
“You might enjoy them
together,” you said.

16 years later, you’re not
slim youth but solid,
handsome man.

In one forgotten family drama
we exchanged fierce words.
Now we talk deeply,
good friends.

Submitted 25 December 2011 (a Christmas 19 years later!) for dVerse Christmas. We no longer live near each other, but Younger Stepson is staying with his father and me this xmas, and the last line of the poem is truer than ever.

Cross-posted from my verse portraits blog, Impressions You Left

After the cold night: haiku and things for July 2008

(Several of these in response to posts by MySpace friends.)

3/7/08:

In memory of Jane McGrath

What we remember –
more than her beautiful face
and famous husband,
even more than her courage –
is her joyous laughter


4/7/08:

This overcast day
my cat on the garden bin
finds one patch of sun.


11/7/08:

After the cold night
sunshine, blue skies and birdsong,
my rose opening.

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

Haiku on Friday

The second Friday
in January last year
a new adventure
began, goes on beginning,
continually renewed.


13/7/08

I water my rose
find her a sunnier spot
between the haiku.


15/7/08

Thanks for the memory!

Couldn't find a rose
so he sent me a pansy
for thoughts ... years ago.


18/7/08:

The first bud blossoms
on the first rose I have grown
and cared for myself.

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

Bittersweet

When losing a friend
the memory of a smile –
such comfort, such pain.


19/7/08:

Busking fruit seller (netsuke)

Fruit fills the basket
but he holds his real treasure –
the ivory flute.


22/7/08:

haiku from between
tradition and tomorrow
forges a new form

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

haiku from between
tradition and tomorrow
kaleidoscopic

(in response to a challenge to complete the first two lines with a third)


25/7/08:

A wild wind last night.
I brought my rosebush inside
but it needs real light.

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

Green frog on the grass
in danger from careless feet
only yesterday.

Her two gentle hands
lifted and carried the frog
to her safe garden.


26/7/08

As twilight deepens
mountains improbably blue
fill the horizon.


28/7/08

Driving home last night
as rain clouds threatened I smiled
thinking of the frogs.

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

Had to prise her off.
She was such a clinging vine,
poor little Ivy!

How To Talk To Inanimate Objects

It might be a tree, or a table. Either way,
if at all possible touch the object
not with fingertips only but your palm.
Touch it firmly but gently, and hold it.
Send love to the object, purposefully.

Stand still and take a deep breath.
As you breathe in, allow your cells to open.
Become a large, empty, waiting space.
Keep very quiet, focused and yet relaxed.
Then feel the subtlety of its message to you.

The message will be a feeling, an energy,
before it is anything else. Afterwards
it may become music or a picture
or even words. Whatever it is, it will come
into your mind like your own thought.

Keep sending love. Otherwise
you will not trust the message, you’ll think
it’s only you: “I just imagined that.”
And keep breathing, feeling your breath
go deeply in and out and your feet on the ground.

Say thank you to tree or table or
anything else you have. Separate slowly,
bringing your energy back in your own body.
If you can, write the message down. You think
you’ll never forget; I promise you will.

24/7/08

(Wednesday prompt: a "how to" poem.)

My Friend's Son

At my house in Beaumaris
when you were five,
you ran straight down the passage
out the back door, jumped
in the pool and lay still
face down on the bottom.

Your mother, alerted
by profound instinct,
looked up at that moment;
in three strides reached the edge
leaned in and hauled you out.

Now you’re thirty-eight,
and the fault entirely
the other driver’s. Once more
you lie motionless. You have
your mind, your speech
and some use of your arms.

She is rescuing you again
in slower, subtler ways.
This time it takes
lawyer, carers, bedside visits
and long-term practical plans.

When I phoned, your voice
was strong and glad.
You sounded just like you.
And I kept remembering
you were such a funny
wriggly little boy.

(Wednesday prompt: Write a poem to an audience, i.e. addressed to a person or thing. Identify your audience in the title.)