It's Time

Vale Gough

It’s time for mourning,

time for knowing

all that we’ve lost

since his time.

It’s time to remember

that long-gone euphoria,

time to ponder

the brief taste of freedom,

time to farewell

the last of the giants —

it’s his time.

It’s time to be thankful

he once walked among us,

time to praise

the reforms that he gave us,

the peace he enacted,

the pacifists un-prisoned,

not before time.

It’s time to celebrate

affordable health care

truly life-saving,

free Universities

for all who could qualify,

the restoring of land rights —

oh yes, it was time.

It’s time to believe

we must not forget him,

it’s time to recapture

the decency, the caring

of that earlier era,

time to maintain

the rage for our time.

It’s time for morning,

a new day, a sunrise.

Yes we can do it.

Yes, now, it’s time!

31 Poems in 31 Days (Poewar / Writer's Resource Center). Prompt: Start with a negative, turn it to a positive.  Also submitted for dVerse Poetics — Good News, Bad News, Your News!

In honour of Gough Whitlam, 1916-2014, former Prime Minister of Australia

Flagging

A friend on facebook posts

a picture of a ‘flag of peace’, sharing it

from a site called ‘Imagine

Peace’. The caption
says, ‘Fly the flag

of peace’ — and I want it to be

a signpost, pointing

in a single direction, not a

flag waving in the breeze according to

whatever wind is

prevailing at the time, in

whatever place the flag is

planted. But I am wrong of course: you have
to be wrong if you object

to a flag of peace; we should all

be grasping it, waving it, fair

in the faces of

any old war-monger out there. Only I

wanted clear direction, and

there isn’t one really, except

I suppose, not to

fly flags

of war.

31 Poems in 31 Days (Poewar / Writer's Resource Centre). Prompt: Use lines of varying length, either end-stopped or enjambed. As I usually end-stop, I decided to try enjambment.

The Greeting

There is nothing casual

in the way he greets me,

though he looks relaxed,

unfolding himself

from where he sprawls

and adopting a leisurely,

almost-swaggering pace.

He is so fluid, moving

with feline grace,

approaching my car

with slow, deliberate steps,

keeping his eyes continually

fixed on mine, holding me

with his intent gaze.

There is nothing formal

in the way I respond —

smiling without premeditation,

alighting quickly,

calling out his name, showing

my pleasure to see him

with an immediate hug.

As we walk up the steps

to the door, I tell him

how good he looks,

his black hair smooth and sleek,

and he tells me

how much he’s missed me,
nuzzling me and purring.

31 Poems in 31 Days (Poewar / Writer's Resource Center). Prompt: Use the words 'formal' and  'casual' in a poem.

Percile

(Discovered by a random click)

Percile is a district

in the Province of Rome

with calm, rectangular buildings

and rounded trees.

The spot on the map

is halfway up 
the boot that is Italy,

round about the knee.

I went to Florence

and was charmed,

to Venice and fell in love —

the bridges, the art, the water!

Rome remains only

maps and pictures

films and stories. Now

I know it’s a Province too.

More than a city,

it includes the city.

The districts are comuni.

Percile is a comune.

Eternal City, forever without me,

nevertheless may you thrive.

Unknown Percile, may you be
a happy community.

31 Poems in 31 Days (Poewar / Writer's Resource Center). Prompt:  A 'wild assignment' — click Wikipedia's random link to find inspiration.

Trees

twine with the stars at night

to travel unseen heights

tracking the mysteries,

touching the Pleiades.

Their roots stretch underground

too, Pleiadian light

taken down, deeply wound,

tangled in our depths and

thrusting up through the crust,

through red earth, clay or sand.

Trees know these Sisters well;

they love them as they must.

They love, and they stand tall,

threading light through the dust.

At Poets United this week the Midweek Motif prompt is Trees. At dVerse Meeting the Bar today we are asked to write in the 'Pleiades' form of seven six-syllable lines with a one word title, every line beginning with the initial of the title. Not quite what was asked for: I've written a Pleaides followed by a reverse Pleiades, as one poem, and added  a rhyme scheme not actually required. We were also asked to include the name of a heavenly body, so I chose the obvious. And — obviously —I've combined both prompts.

"Rising Once Again"

(Re-reading the Rubaiyat*)

The moon is coming to the full

white-gold over a rosy sunset,

the first star tiny above and far.

Nights like this, I think of the redhead.

“Ah moon of my delight, that knows no wane”.

(That phrase I fit to him always.)

He was lithe and tall with flowing mane,

a fabulous creature of passion.

I wonder where he sleeps tonight,

clutching the air with his great paws —

still alive on the earth? Under what moon?

I know he remembers me too, always.

I turn the pages of the old book

in my mind only, in memory.

The first star is tiny above, and far.
The moon is coming to the full.

*The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, translated by Edward Fitzgerald.

31 Poems in 31 Days (Poewar / Writer's Resource Centre). Prompt: Reread some of your old poetry. Write a new poem about a subject from one of your old poems. See how revisiting it feels.

I found that I still stand behind the sentiments with which I first wrote old pieces, and am usually still happy with the versification too. This one, from 2001, never worked as I wanted it to. I didn't write a completely new poem but gave it an extensive rewrite; it's greatly altered.

View, Spring Afternoon

The mountains across the way

curve like the long back

of this black cat, reposing

beside me in the sun.

Long black lazy curves

of sinuous back

and the hump of the head

with one pointed ear jutting.

Long hazy curves, blue-grey,

of somnolent mountain

with, at one end, a small hump

and an even smaller point.

31 Poems in 31 Days (Poewar / Writer's Resource Center). Prompt: Write a poem that follows the three basic rules of the Imagists:

1. Direct treatment of the “thing”, whether subjective or objective.
2. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.
3. As regarding rhythm: to compose in sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of the metronome.

If I Told You

If I told you how cold I felt last night,

if I told you that I and the night grew old

from not holding you, helpless to press you

against my breast, helpless to fight against

endless regrets for the blessing of you

being over and gone, being past and done,

so I’m left here endlessly alone …

If I told you all that, would you, could you, come back

to hold and enfold me and make me feel whole?

No, I know that you won't: you’re really a soul

and the old ways are over and you have evolved.

So I turn to remembrance, the semblance of real,

and I feel still the love that we did have, and will
in the cycles of birth and rebirth, forever …

31 Poems in 31 Days (from Poewar /Writer's Resource Center). Prompt: Use various kinds of repetition.

Linking, a year later, to the Tuesday Platform for 27 Oct. 2015 at 'imaginary garden with real toads'.

Crosses in a Graveyard

I wish I had had this,

and I want to deny.

The moist earth

has forgotten she ever knew me.

Remember how I hated them —

symbols of someone I no longer recall.

(Yet would still embrace always,

beyond this realm.)

31 Poems in 31 Days (from Poewar / Writer's Resource Center). Prompt: Choose a writing process you haven't tried before. I tried something I once read of: choose someone else's poem, respond to each line with one of your own, remove the other poet's lines, tweak. The result is a work of fiction and I think the narrator must be a ghost! The source was De Profundis by Lorca.

First Steps on a New Path

We four women, old friends and new,

drove to the Castle in Spring sunshine.

‘You are a Way Shower, aren’t you?’

said my newest friend, making me glad.

We stood in the smoke from a big pot

of burning eucalyptus leaves.

The Elders told us the true history

passed down through the grandmothers.

‘We came from the stars, but we were made

here, long ago, the first people.

‘This land is far more ancient than you know

because you have been told lies.’

The custodian of the land we stood on

declared us adopted.

Now we too have responsibilities
to the land and to the truth.

We all closed our eyes while Priscilla sang
the Song of the Beginning.

31 Poems in 31 Days (from Poewar / Writer's Resource Center). Prompt: syllabic verse.  Each verse of this poem is a 17-syllable 'American sentence' (a form devised by Allen Ginsberg) divided into two lines. I am also trying for something I call 'ghazal-type' in that it's somewhat discontinuous, with gaps in the narrative, like a ghazal (indeed a quasi-ghazal). Hence this is my 'ghazal-type 17-2' invention. (I already invented 'ghazal-type 17-3' — and yes, I know it's a cumbersome label, but at least it gives some indication of what it purports to describe.)

Old is Beautiful

Despite the big tummy and hips,

despite the saggy tits,

despite the increasing wrinkles,

I am beautiful!

Everyone says so.

I post my photos on facebook,

carefully chosen of course

but still revealing I’m aged,

and compliments proliferate.

It’s a satisfying feeling.

When I was young,

I was the un-beautiful girl,

wallflower at dances.

(Or was that for the two left feet

and being too shy to talk?)

Anyway, I was never going to be

a Playboy centrefold,

and the boys never swarmed, buzzing.

I’m not sure how I scored

the three husbands, all the lovers.

But now I’m beautiful.

It’s a proven fact.

And when I walk down the street

or into the shops,

people smile and call me darling.

At nearly 75, finally

I made it. I think it must be

because I’m a witch. I prayed —

no, not to the Devil, you fool.

He doesn’t exist. The Devil’s a myth.

But when I was young

and felt the lack,

I prayed hard for beauty.

And kept on praying. Now

here it is! The Goddess is good.

31 Poems in 31 Days (from Poewar / Writer's Resource Center). Prompt: Write a poem in the first person that makes a definitive statement. Stand behind something you believe or tell a bold lie. Either way, embrace what you have to say.