Summer and if the sun were a smoker its ankle would be twisting its knee describing satisfying arcs as it squashed us butts under its big chunky-soled boot but it's not the sun that's smoking. We've been to the markets and we're walking back to the car grass crunching underfoot like natural-grown cellophane. Rain has … Continue reading A True Story
such a summer ripe with wetting fattened fruits primed for netting I saw the moon had grown mouldy dully grey and rumpled oldly cockies shrieking raucous, shocking days aprick with grass seeds, socking humid shroud of air that holds me ropes of rain plunging boldly pinned and damp as limping moth ‘neath the sky, its … Continue reading Looking Back
Mountain shrouds rising behind trees’ black, dead-armed scream. River’s rush below. My tears are for the wombats... all wildlife who starved or burned My first attempt at a Tanka - a Japanese poetry form explained by Ingrid at EIF.
Recently, my parents acquired a book put together by their community about the fires and then the floods which swept through the area last summer. People contributed photos and stories of their experiences. The book shows humans doing their best in a world turned totally crazy. On their faces are fear, sadness, determination, and hope. … Continue reading An Instant Library
Fandango’s Flashback Friday (only I’m late because we were away for the weekend) suggests posting a blog from this date on a previous year. I don’t have Friday’s exact date but this is only one day out. I hope you enjoy…
I
hate this wind and the brown sky and the pluming brown dust and the
brown, brown oval… except where the sprinkler has leaked and there
is a patch of rich green – a puddle reflecting what used to be.
The
scraping leaves exfoliate my heart like an acid. On days like to
today (today, when it was supposed to rain) I find it so hard to
believe that everything will be okay.
As
I walked this morning, a few spats of rain found their way to the
ground, like salt on a meal. When I got home I looked at the radar.
Down south, there is rain. So that is something.
Yesterday
at the fruit shop, the cashier lady, just returned from 6 weeks “at
home” in Bhutan commented that “compared to home, Australia is a
desert”. She landed, on Friday, in Sydney, thinking it an overcast
day, expecting…
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What is this "human spirit" this mysterious, awesome thing? It's basically an iron stake to which the injured cling. We're proud of our "resilience" (our giant brains love words) but frankly our self obsession is verging on absurd. Our spirit is definitely human: that's obvious to me but the spirit part is not unique! It's … Continue reading Spirit
Seventeen years ago a roar engulfed the singing pines - countless breaths exhaling the needle sting of smoke. They stood in shredded funeral garb flinging glowing ember flowers onto us below. They witnessed our syncopated falling and the operatic scream of twisting steel, the cymbal crash of exploding windows. We knelt prostrate before the fire … Continue reading The House at No. 3
I cannot forget your steely-white glare; the too-hot press of you against my skin. My body contracted until cracks appeared. Plants wilted, waterholes sucked in and my body fissured abandoned to exuberant wind and the angry roar of carbon-crazed dragons. The smoke rolled over us all like hell's too-slow envoy. Before it, a syndicate of … Continue reading Australia’s Summer
(I wrote this for a competition in which there was a 1000 word limit. It didn't win so, several months later, I think I will publish it here.) It turns out that waiting is the hard part. You decide that waiting needs to be redefined to mean “empty space; opportunity for useless worry.” As the … Continue reading Waiting..
We started with fires and then muddy mires, then a lockdown of worldwide trade Then Scomo's spat with China, well that's nothing minor when your economy needs First Aid. And now... what the blazes? So many malaises! It's that incorrigible school house pot. Most of the nation in enforced isolation but it seems the … Continue reading Living in 2020
