Clean (April Challenge 7)

Prompt: A "clean" poem and a"dirty" poem. Either one, or both.

Go to the wind, she said.
Give yourself to the wind.
Let it cradle your face
and stroke your hair.
You will never be free unless
you agree to be cleansed by the wind.

Go next to the sun, she said.
Stand in its incandescent rays
and let those rays pour over you.
All you have gathered
that is not your Self
will wash from you in that stream of radiance.

Turn then, she said, to the river.
Let it speak to you,
let it embrace you.
Surrender to the river.
When it washes you back to the shore
you will feel yourself reborn.

Finally, she said, come to your Mother.
Lie prone upon the naked earth
be it sand or stone or grass or forest floor
and let my beating heart renew you.
Bask in my nurture, feel how solid.
You will emerge cleaner and freer than light.

(I hope to come up with a "dirty" piece before the day's out.)

The Man at the Next Table

Hardly noticed at first
absorbed in coffee and book
then the phlegmy cough intruded
loud, recurrent, unscreened by hand.
I raised my book higher between us.

Elderly. Weathered.
Baseball cap, t-shirt, work shorts.

Laughter. Interjections.
Was he communicating
with wife or friend at the counter?
Followed his gaze. No-one. But …
ah! someone invisible in the other chair.

Met him walking later.
Not so old after all. Maybe 50.

Cross Posted from my 'verse portraits' blog, Impressions You Left,  this also does duty as my 2009 April Challenge 6.

Town Hall Clock (April Challenge 5)

Prompt: a landmark

I seldom see it now.
Just occasionally on TV
there’ll be some fleeting item
about Launceston, Tasmania,
and often enough then
that particular location.
But anyway

it wasn’t the seeing,
though that was reassuring too —
the graceful old stone,
the reds and browns and creams
and the broad tower —
so much as the hearing
every quarter hour

and on the hour
the striking of the notes
melodious and slow.
You could hear it all over town.
(I wonder if you still can
now that the town
is so expanded?)

As a child I lay in bed
the many sleepless hours
after nightmares,
and got myself cosy again
listening to those reliable chimes.
There was something mothering
about that clock.

Flint

There’s only one animal.

Never mind how much I admire
almost lustfully other species.

The great eagles that used to coast
on thermals outside our windows

when we lived near The Pinnacle
across from the Border Ranges.

Like dancers. Or like high divers
when they arrowed for their prey.

Sleek felines, big or domestic,
their shapes and the way they move.

Again, predators. Is it that I love
efficient, ruthless savagery?

Not so. I don’t love crocodiles.
(Sorry, Steve Irwin.) Cold brutes!

Nevertheless there is only
one animal. Not even the right kind.

Really I’m a cat person (obviously).
Not so mad on dogs. They’re nice enough….

Merely the only animal? Flint
is more: the only dog.

(A pang as I think of Dakota –
but he was mostly wolf.)

Flint who stood the height of my thigh.
Flint with the curly brown coat

and smooth forehead as if his hair was styled.
The slim front paws, the strong back legs.

Flint who was all kindness
despite his size and baying bark.

Flint who would have died for me.
Didn’t, but is dead.

There is no other.

April Poem A Day Challenge 2009. Prompt: an animal

Yes, it’s autumn: haiku for March 2009

4/3/09

Her bright quick young voice
makes me feel slow and heavy.
The day goes to dusk.


6/3/09

In response to a haiku series criticising ‘witches’ who charge a fee to find your soul-mate:

You never need pay
to discover a soul-mate.
Fate will unite you!

Real witches harm none,
nor do we manipulate.
We are the healers.


7/3/09

Step in the shower,
turn up the hot tap, higher.
Yes, it's autumn.


13/3/09

Wind, rain and loud sea.
The edges of the cyclone
graze us in passing.


16/3/09

Cyclone, blown offshore,
has left us a reminder:
the tide mark’s higher.


20/3/09

Deleted profiles.
Red crosses litter my lists.
There were no goodbyes.

(You probably have to be familiar with MySpace to get this one.)


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

Tracks along the beach –
big dog, little dog, seagull,
bare feet, sneakers, me.
I meet myself coming back.
The rising tide creeps closer.


21/3/09

Autumn on the Tweed.
What could be more beautiful?
Each day I give thanks.


22/3/09

The tide thunders in
just before darkness descends,
nearly catches me.


24/3/09

(for Bette)

A line of bright bulbs
drenches the porch in fragrance,
their colours singing.


27/3/09

Late March, cooler nights,
the doona's back on the bed.
We both sleep soundly.

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

He gathers no moss,
collects flowers as haiku:
Takke Rollingstone.

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

The tide’s on the turn.
Six years close to the ocean;
now, how much longer?

The light changes: blue-green-grey,
white-edged, waves mirrored by clouds.

The trouble with my leg (April Challenge 3)

Prompt: Write a poem with the title "The trouble with (blank)" and fill in the blank. (Actually "problem with" but we're allowed to depart from the prompt.)

Now I need to write the title here again, for continuity:

The trouble with my leg


is the pain. And it’s constant.
That is, it’s there all the time
like a dull headache, and when
it flares up it’s excruciating.

It makes me cranky and I’m sorry.
I’ll try not to be so grumpy.
I’m going to watch television.
I can’t concentrate on anything else.

Yes I got an x-ray. Yes, of my leg.
That didn’t do any good at all.
And I’m only allowed to take
six Panamax in one day.

Yes I know the doctor said
I could take more. I’ll
decide on that if you don’t mind.
I don’t like taking tablets.

I don’t know what I want.
I can’t stand, I can’t walk.
I can’t even think. Why
can’t you tune in or something?

(No, this isn’t me. It’s a “found” poem –
found in someone else’s conversation.)

He Looked Into the Leaning Light (April Challenge 2)

Prompt: write about an outsider


He looked into the leaning light
just before it faded, just before
the sun fell into the sea.

He saw there dim shapes like angels
and glimpses of a shifting landscape
tantalising … then came dark.

And this was his trouble. Always
without meaning to, he saw such things
while those around him didn’t.

Who could he talk to, who would hear?
Then after all, it became easy.
One of the beings spoke back.

That’s right, spoke back – back to his thoughts
using a language of liquid light
and the whole sky broke open.

Afterwards there was no reason
to converse with blind and deaf people.
The world he walked in dazzled.

Its music was a mystery
of intricate delight and longing.
He moved surrounded by clouds.

Why should he not choose in the end
to enter rapture permanently?
Nothing was holding him back.

You and Me: Our Origins (April Challenge 1)

Yes, I'm doing the April Poem-a-Day Poetry Challenge again, at Poetic Asides - among hundreds of others doing it this year! (Over 700 at last count.) Today's prompt is "origin".

*****************************************************************************(to Andrew)


It began when you came and walked on my land.
Later you said you vaguely remembered
a man with a dog. You’d spoken to him briefly.

That was my husband, my dog, my house.
We’d hired the place out for Jenette’s workshop.
He made himself scarce around the paddocks,
I was in town for Reiki training.

I got home just as the light was changing.
The workshop people had all gone.
Bill and I were already separate
though living under the same roof.
Suddenly I knew I had to get out.

Later I said it was your energy
in my space that galvanised me –
but then we had no idea of each other,
no inkling of a joined future.

Jenette’s next workshop brought us together.
Over dinner on our first date
we discovered so many friends in common,
so many tastes and passionate interests,
it almost became ridiculous.

And we recollected earlier meetings:
the spiritual group, the activist group.
But the time wasn’t right; we’d barely noticed.
I wonder, though, did our auras brush?

Hugging me close one night, you whispered.
Shocked, I knew I’d heard that voice
in meditation years before.

It began when you came and walked on my land,
this time. But as to the origin…

Editorial aside: Back in business!

Oh dear, I'm listed as stalled. And no wonder.

On New Year's Eve we received notice, as our landlord wanted to move back into his house. We found another, moved on January 21st - and due to stuff-ups by telecommunications people we were offline for 6 weeks. Hideously frustrating! I'm only just starting to catch up with many things including this blog. The whole thing was a big interruption to writing, too.

Whether I can actually finish my 365 pieces within the year (by June 29th) seems somewhat problematical. But we'll see. I aim to finish them in any case. I've loved this exercise!

Apologies

Dear Readers -

Sorry about the delay in posting the January and February haiku. We moved house and it took AGES to get back online! Most frustrating, and I'm glad to be back. :)

After the firestorm: haiku for February 2009

Daphne in the rain.
The sudden scent returns me
from new home to old.


5/2/09

The clock face is placed
to stare at me all the night
while I fail to sleep.

Branches on the roof
strike loudly in the darkness –
or the bogey-man?


6/2/09

Little bitey things
dwell at our beach paradise.
No place is perfect.


11/2/09

I know all those towns
now burned to ghostly ashes.
That is, I used to.


13/2/09

Friday the 13th.
In Australia we shrug.
The worst has happened.

******

After the firestorm
townships of empty rubble
are without colour.
Nothing now but grey and brown
in all those pretty places.

******

Summer is gone.
Suddenly in just one night
steady rain, cold wind.


18/2/09

The sun and the breeze
inky sky, outgoing tide
a lone gull soaring.

On the dunes a beach sculpture
a dancing boy, arms outspread.


19/2/09

As the tide roars in
I walk alone on the beach
after some thunder.

I reach the black rocks,
turn and see three fishermen
lining the shallows.


20/2/09

In the absence of
internet access, I brood
and write more haiku.

******

Autumn already,
if not yet officially;
the weather mellows.


27/2/09

The brown snake uncoils
separating from the grass
rearing up, fangs bared.