This is what I remember: forty degrees and a Halloween glow at 6pm; we took our children up Mt Ainslie to see a city under siege - the sewer brown smoke bloodying the sun. The lake dread gold, Tolkien's Smaug unleashed summer ashes raining Written for dVerse's Monday Quadrille "Ash"
The sun sits in leaky splendour; watermelon juice staining this upholstery this smog brown décor this Faberge sunset this velveteen smoke haze. A cloying choice but here we all sit in our plush living room our shrine of consecrated ignorance and listen to the clock and the crackle roar of our future. Written for Misky's … Continue reading The Place We Live
pour happy thoughts into your breakfast bowl that summer mayn't dry out hope leaving it on footpaths adrift amongst the stepping stone madness of commuter feet try looking for a moment through the spectrum of flowers petal art by vein they have hearts too open to the sun begging for bees and if they wilt … Continue reading They Have Hearts Too
It was said that all things must pass: the big wheels turning, turning over the drought-lands, the down-and-out lands cattle skeletons ploughed in like rotted ships fence-posts - frayed and far-fetched zippers - dragging lines of wind-sawn wire – dun and drear the fierce fires rolling, roiling wanton flames - the lunge and buck, the … Continue reading Things that Pass
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
bowed and broken:
an army in black surrender.
Up on the hill, now
between the sleek sheets
of glistening modernity
and long embedded gardens,
I am still here.
The run-away grass
(that feathered doom)
tickles my concrete pad.
The triad tongues
of fire, water & tanin
have left printed shadows
and the jagged prod
of steel beams into nothing
is my toothy skyline.
The house that was.
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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Out of the Cave 