ONE who trims the tops off waves to watch them bleed white curlicues? Only the ‘arbourist TWO boy with bent knees swims loudly in the pool belly through a doughnut hole face a joy of sun and blue splash flings three metres high drops as big as bees (those hopscotch occupants of drooping big belled … Continue reading Face the Strange
“Mummy, if 10 x 10 equaled 50, would our paper planes fly straight?” I know the rain was heavy because the bedraggled underpass (with plinking echoes and the green glitter of smashed bottles) smells mysteriously of mint. I lift my nose and my voice to the early snare of Ravel’s Bolero adding other instruments as … Continue reading My Daughter’s Question
You dressed yesterday in benevolent blue; your full skirted frock waist gathered in with the smell of Saturday’s lawn and bird cry's eighteen carat tinkle. Your jeweled neck its gracious curve promising protection at every horizon until clouds peeled back stark neon skeleton the slash of exposed bone and roar of pain. You clapped me … Continue reading Summer Sky
I want to know if frogs (between small throat booms and balloon eye blinks) plait star beams with reed blades making mattresses for their frothy spawn. Or perhaps, their sixth sense skin demands shiny nova caresses ... shouldn’t we all? A masseuse for our dreaming. The background to this post is long and complicated. It … Continue reading Frog Wisdom
Should we cover our eyes? The weather is changing shedding kaftan of spangled yellow and twitching greens. A boozy breeze arises (should we cover our eyes?) brandishing fickle fists and punching cloth to flapping, draws forth a wool curtain in sullen billows over trees. Should we cover our eyes? A storm in gunmetal grey malicious, … Continue reading Modesty
pomelo sun in tinctured pizzicato traces filament shadows; viridescent skeletons unveiled... this archaeology by light Written for Miz Quickly QnV12 "Small Blessings"
you can imagine how when the wheel barrow overflows and the silkies look like pantalooned punks we rename the rooster MC Hammer Written for Miz Quickly QnV13 (a sequel to "The Red Wheelbarrow" by William Carlos Williams)
look to the grey sky the absence of corners that’s where we are humbled - in that arc, there’s no resting place no flat-footed motel - insipid tiles to drop our tears on with our faces upturned we must listen now and acknowledge fundamentally the persecution of raindrops Written for Miz Quickly QnV 10 Use … Continue reading the absence of corners
Once upon a time (at the formal table after grace and roast lamb) your stewed plums with ice cream: tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor... what would I be? A boardwalk of years and I’m guessing still. Like those dust mites riding sun slabs (diagonal highways lighting up the dim old big shed), I stayed out of … Continue reading Banjo’s Stock Whips
Hair twisted carelessly back, she squats flat footed - the firm ‘M’ of legs and buttocks, and out front a large round wicker work tray. She bounces peanuts, wispy skins float away, sailing silent on the saline breeze. Evening washes in, ocean displacing shuffled greys. Soft syllables of the mopoke repeating and repeating; drifting to … Continue reading This is My Gravity
We share this warm October air with picnickers badminton nets and the treat of strangers’ laughter; and the flapping of spare canvas as the sailing school tack neatly around the last buoy. Race complete the dozen craft sweep home, a colourful raft of sails atop lozenge-like hulls, each with one or two crew and each … Continue reading October Evening
My watch of twelve years ran out of ticks We left it in the garage window hoping the sun would revive its solar heart and there it stayed face to face with time royalty unmoved. I have meant to buy another but these days watches are jewellery or else Bond-like devices that answer seven purposes … Continue reading Watch Out
In taut arabesque and sterling trim you hold the light. Pointing leaves exalt your luminescence, moth-quiet, whispering “manna manna”. You show me elegance in the rain. Resilient dancers, your merry tutus sway ivory tendrils in canopy’s sunlit pantomime. And then, cocky-flung and homeless, you celebrate rebirth: the gates to soil’s womb. Written for Miz Quickly … Continue reading Eucalyptus Mannifera
From the living room window the park’s got a honeydew filter and the cockies are early in to shred some elm flowers. The pear tree’s mostly in leaf shadowed by the white confetti of its previous glory and the little crabapple droops with pink memories. Milk’s nearly out and I cook porridge a single hotplate … Continue reading Monday
What if exhaust fumes were purple... City buildings bathed in amethyst, and windows tinted to wisteria. Lunching on plum benches in a bruised park, sunflowers nodding magenta. Would washing machines whirl out the debonaire sweat of Unicorns and surfers watch storm water run into a periwinkle sea? Perhaps then, we might look up and notice … Continue reading What if…
They are tuning a guitar repetitive reverberations like your purring in the night. It is I who phones the vet, an iron filing in my lung. Put away your tin snips; the moon is unhinged enough, swinging from that cloud like a child’s tooth. Just let it be. Please. Written for Miz Quickly Oct 8 … Continue reading Another Thing
Image by C Coles Phillips (1880-1927) (Like Mother's own sails she's cinched and stayed) It's early, driftwood quiet except for waters' lazy slap Far off, through pearly haze she knows the summer harbour its busy stone window and the framing stench of fish. But here, there's the pleasure of an empty deck the sky blue … Continue reading Blue Morning
Out of the Cave 