If you are checking this blog occasionally, I just wanted to let you know I'm concentrating on writing a memoir right now. I will be back on 1st June with a new series of Poem-A-Day entries, to a theme I've made up myself. See you then.

Victory

I just have to
drink you
red wine, merlot
to be succinct
toast success:
it was inspiring
the leadership
our Shire Council
decided to provide.

State Government
cares not whether we
sink or swim 
in waters and futures
contaminated by
greed thinking.

We thought four for,
three against
would be good.
It was five for, two
against in the end.
We cheered wildly
and some cried.
This victory
only the beginning.

LOL

All those years ago
teaching Social Studies
I called them dreamers -
without photoshop
they created visions
and we feared
the domination
of robots, computers
taking over the world.

Well, they have
taken over.
The known world
is not the country
we once inhabited.
Here I sit, reading
posts by my daughter
hitting "Like" and
saying "Love"
and she returns
the compliment
two rooms away
behind closed doors.

Going for Brunch in Bulleen With Old Friends

Driving east on the Ballarat Road
Sal Kimber rollin' me along, our
crossroads intersecting, where life's
lines are drawn.

It's trains, and journeys
along a river, dancing to
our forebears' tunes, crossing
country only to make a song.

I'm a highway traveller
freeway lover
the rhythm of wheels
notes and scores
of the past unsung.

Driving west on the Ballarat Road
knowing Deer Park was truly so
and a new Officeworks will save
us hours.

It's driving that opens up
new opportunities, makes the eye
see what was not there before,
and stories get told with drums.

I'm a highway traveller
freeway lover
the rhythm of wheels
notes and scores
my lifelong song.

East is my past, the people of love,
of everlasting hope for futures lost.
West, I face the setting sun, the future
repetitious, red.

It's always a road divided
broken by lines, official and
unintended. The music moves
and so do I, marking the beat.

I'm a highway traveller
freeway lover
the rhythm of wheels
notes and scores
always a tune in my head.

April Poem-A-Day Challenge   Day 30


prompt: finished/never finished

It's only when I think
I'm doomed to die
tomorrow that I regret
the unfinished memoirs,
the poems never discovered
in others' conversations
the paper that clogs every
drawer, shelf, table top.

Luckily, my diagnoses
are refuted by the doctor
highly qualified and 
unquestionably right.
I continue squirelling away
my precious impressions
against another
hungry-for-a-future day.

April Poem-A-Day Challenge   Day 29

prompt: a line from a previous poem

Massive explosion
(after the collapse of a garment factory)

In a country of twenty-three million
how do we count twenty-five hundred
survivors, refugees from corporate
greed country? There are the dead
of course, almost twice as many
as we lost to fire that apocalyptic summer.
The numbers, the numbers, represent
families without food or water, without
a future. We are living in an era
of unimaginable explosive potential.

April Poem-A-Day Challenge   Day 28

prompt: a shadorma
(syllables: 3 - 5 - 3 - 3 - 7 - 5)

Totally
sick of her coughing
I eat fast
remind her
the doctor's appointment is
tomorrow at one.