November Poem-A-Day Challenge

Day 7 Prompt: "what won't wait"

Back pain makes no appointments
doesn't wait for permission

I wake up into its grip, can't wait
to lie down again under hands

that redesign muscles.

Day 8  Prompt: Write a poem about the paranormal and/or the normal. (2 for Tuesday)

Normal

Those large white birds
navigating valley updraughts
might be spirits of ancestors
signs of no impending bushfire
a mirage in the thunderous air
but I call them sulphur-crested
and cockatoos.

Day 9  Prompt: (blank) or (blank)

Now. Or then?

The bus passes Mountain View Quarries
and I see the shimmering outlines/ghosts
of forested ridges, irreplaceable. In my
lifetime, this huge deceptively light-coloured
black hole has appeared, sucked all life
out of perfectly good earth.

The sign to Woodend reminds me of
aunts and visiting them in the hundred-year-old
cottage. Auntie C commuted to Carlton
while Auntie B, thin and grey, was a chimney
constantly chuffing out smoke from collapsed
lungs. I never had an Auntie A.

Friend, E, visited Woodend with me, found
snow between bushfired-forest remnants.
In photos they appear as thin black prison bars.
She, however, was liberated by touching snow.
Being a girl from the African Tropics, she warmed
her skin in secondhand woollen garments, while

her heart was always hot. It is that girl
I must forget. Soon, I will meet a woman
middle-aged, mother, wife, presidential
candidate, national leader. Will I find fire
or ashes? After twenty-five years, we are both
new, our views constant, changing, alive.

Day 10  Prompt: a different perspective

Cow ruminating

Why they trot around all day on foot
or in metal boxes, looking up and
forward, like horses, I find repellent.

There is a look that tells me I'm a "thing"
not the honoured keeper of those endless
greens they've spread across these rolling hills.

I keep my head down as all sensible beings
must, mowing to regurgitate; they call it "cud".
I chew slowly, watching them eating the air.