Off the Cuff 24: Driving East & Earthenware

APAD 24    prompt: an evening poem

Driving East

Sun behind us only
briefly dazzles in mirrors.
We have counted
four hawks hovering
and wonder whether
they're fixed on
mouse or lizard.

Now the sun retires -
through pastel light the birds -
magpies, black birds, galahs in pairs
swiftly, silently aim for shelter
in blackened bushes, trees.

We continue crossing
their paths, our eyes
fixed on town lights,
white lines, other vehicles
the future, the darkness
beyond headlights.


Earthenware

The more disguised you are
the more functional you become.
I pick you up, weigh the value
your fragility, capacity to bear
loads, temporary or long-term.

At thirty years old, you, clay pot
hold firm, still shining, still unchipped.
In you I placed the small statue
a cross-legged tobacco seller
whose brittle limbs broke off.

Protection: like a mind which draws
a curtain around experience, the pieces.
I make good use of mugs, bowls, pots
for plants, all made in China or by
craftspeople around this country.

Clay pots with obvious origin
in hands, from women gathering
at roadsides, sitting on one hip
on the ground in a group, holding out
their wares, are another species.

Made to earn money for education
they bear the future for all women
all families whose hunger rises
like steam on an outdoor wood fire
where there is nothing to eat.

When it rains here in my country
is that steam, evaporated, watering
my verdant garden, its herbs
growing from clay, mulched to
prevent  being baked hard, glazed?

NaPoWriMo  24

Off the Cuff 12: Living in the CBD, Melbourne & Singing in the Baptist Church

APAD 12       prompt: pick a city

Living in the CBD, Melbourne

My colleague lives on the corner
of Little Collins Street and Spencer Street
right across from Southern Cross Station
where all the trains from country towns
terminate, and the racket of metropolitan
trains can shake the teeth from your gums.

Today his lunch included roast pumpkin
from my garden, out there where country
trains are born, and I asked him, "Are you
growing herbs on a balcony where you live?"
"Ah, no," he said. "They'd get covered
in soot. As a matter of fact, I'm asthmatic."

As I chewed my home-grown cucumber
and spicy pumpkin dip on bread sold in
paper bags to enhance its image as healthy,
I pondered the gifts of the city: great views
of public sculptures, parklands pasted over
industrial wastelands, the vertical challenge

of journeying in lifts day in, day out, the risk
of needing a doctor at midnight, the lights
that are never turned off, glass walls that
provide myriad images of self and other
self and others, others, others, and self.
Dying with blackened lungs, for research.


Singing in the Baptist Church

It's been associated with women and seduction
the danger of sirens ringing through centuries of ears.
It's been the best way of being breath-taking
for those of us who, ex-smokers, now
enjoy oxygen in our advanced years.

We ain't no rock
and we are marching
freedom is coming
o La Lay!
That's our repertoire
in the A-Choired Taste
of Gospel, whether or not
we come here to pray.

My daughter's not old
her voice is pure
if anyone's a siren here
it's her and Lauren, sure.
But without them rocks
and miles from a shipping
route,
our energy rises as
our voices dispute
the sinful nature of
singing out loud.
And it's the harmony
of team-voice
that really makes us proud.


NaPoWriMo

Off the Cuff 11: The Last Thing & The Nurse's Last Stand

APAD 11    prompt: "The Last ___________" (fill in the blank)

The Last Thing

The last thing I want to do
is kill you off
but you have
crossed the boundaries I set
two years ago
once too often.

How dare you stand there, unmoving
beautiful, so alive!
while I fume, wanting
to cut you down, dreading the moment.

I have googled you:
read the rave reviews
the rapturous praise.
Too bad, I know the other side -
that relentless will to dominate
destroy, strangle
all possibility of competition.

Have I loved you?
Oh yes. Do I know you?
Yes! And the last thing I want to do
is kill you, but
as I said: once too often you have
broken my rules.
This murder must
happen soon, or
I'll be forever powerless against
your heartlessness,
your cruel fingers
couch grass.


The Nurse's Last Stand

We sat in a yellow and blue room
with a view. She completed
black page after black page
for her only son, soon to turn
twenty-one. Two albums as her
legacy, knowing there was
nothing to be done.

She took the treatments, both
mainstream and alternative,
calmly. Over the black pages
bright with primary colours
and family adventures, she said:
When the pain ... I will take
myself away.

And she did. Lying in
in a tropical apartment with
white sheets and white walls
the blue sea and yellow sands
she let the pain take her
through morphine heaven
to freedom.

NaPoWriMo

Off the Cuff 8: From the Platform & A Tool

From the Platform

one sparrow
one pigeon
one willy wagtail
four sparrows
eight!
the pigeon stalks left
willy wagtail dances
for balance
on metal fence -
is it hot to the feet?
slippery?
worn smooth?
sparrows form a search party
a squad on the bluemetal
between rails
going forward in formation
pecking and jumping
the pigeon exits
sparrows flutter
train vibrates
their food platter

NaPoWriMo


APAD 8   prompt: a tool

Gone, now, you
after a light easy lunch
and an energetic session
shearing the garden.

Thank you for the heavy
labour, the lifting and shifting
and the attack on all
vagrant vines.

The way you pruned
the fuchsia bush, I must say,
surprised me. But you've always been
a one hundred percent or nothing boy.

Gone, now, the purple hearts
in their pink skirts. No doubt the nub
of wood you left will re-shoot.
Lighten up! I tell myself daily.

There's more cutting and clearing
to be done, son. When will you
return? And btw, where are the shears?
The patio weeds really do need pruning.

Off the Cuff 7: White butterflies & Until When?

First, NaPoWriMo poem:


White butterflies flit
with pollen-printed feet
around rosemary's tangled purple
calendula's upright ripe gold
the white fluff on stringy wild rocket.
Fences, house lots, so many acres or hectares
mean nothing to them. We are nothing.
Our gardens are simply the world
to see the world in, to dance
among the noted denizens
& alight briefly upon.



Until when?

The sands hide facts.
You can build a cathedral
from theories.
He lays down sticks just so
no-one will see sacred remnants.
The wind co-operates.
You can build a past
from tiny fragments.
There is only now
with the sand, the sticks
the bones, his hands.
There is only now
and the truth shifting, shaping
centuries of concealment
and discovery ...

APAD 7    prompt: Begin with "Until ___________" and fill in the blank.

Off the Cuff 4: A History Poem & Community

  APAD 4:   Prompt: a history poem

"Here is always now. How can it be anything else?" Robert Dessaix

Let's say each brown crumbling fern frond
I've snipped off this morning (then)
is a chapter in my history and the fern's.
Let me announce publication of a book
starring dead leaves dumped on a garden bed,
the past informing the future of serial growth.
Continuance must and does matter.
I must wear long sleeves and gloves
since the cancer. To separate these two facts
would seem dishonest. I sweat freely
as I lift and dump and snip, and press down
on more weed than I have bins for.
Let's say (then, now) that my arms
enfold - embrace what was (there) then
is Here Now and only here. Now.

NaPoWriMo

Community


She sees them as she drives to shops:
tall, narrow, the girls short-skirted

the boys who swing hips, look down
at neighbourhood caucasian friends.

The mothers are swathed in gorgeous colour,
backs lacking babies snug in shawl or cloth.

She hears the community church
has offered help. She doesn't belong

but thought of knocking on their door
offering a casserole, afternoon tea

She is surprised at her timidity -
the street was hers before they came.

But isn't that true for any tenanted
houses with unmowed lawns?

She remembers how a different colour
can be a justification for advantage.

Remembers, too, the food offered
in welcome, too tough for her teeth.

Let the church marshall support.
She happily relinquishes guilt.

Off the Cuff 3: Partly cloudy & Live Production

Sunday April 4th

APAD 3    prompt: 'Partly _______"

Partly cloudy

Partly cloudy, completely still.
I know I should be spraying.
Couch grass leaps with joyful will
while I am wilfully delaying

the effort it takes to dress for the sport
of putting the grass in its place.
I can't help admiring its vigour and verve
its shining irrefutable grace.

I could blame the weather
but it's perfectly calm
and the sun has a generous glow.
It's my distaste for killing
and agents of harm
that has me reap what I sow:

a backyard to rival a walk through the woods
where crumbs would get lost in the growth.
A garden that does what it wants without help
and the knowledge of self as a sloth.


NaPoWriMo

Live Production

the sound of one finger
raising the volume

the realm of magic
announced by spotlight

you stay hidden
dressed in black

Off the Cuff 1: A Lonely Poem & The Garden Runs

It's Poetry Month in the USA and time to write a Poem-A-Day. It's also NaPoWriMo time - in other words: a poem a day. That's TWO at a time. The Poetic Asides challenge is to write to a prompt. The NaPoWriMo game is to write a poem about anything.

April 1st

APAD 1     prompt: a lonely poem

i meant to squash it,
she says, now it's
somewhere ... there ...
the curtains remain immobile.

carefully, I imagine,
one young huntsman
secures a hide
and hopes there's no
competition.

alone but not lonely
such words not occurring
in a spider's dictionary.


The Garden Runs

Left it for only a few weeks
and look where it's got to:
we're trying to train vines
and they're running amok

slapping Mum in the face
clinging to rose bushes
and any other damn handy
thing. As for the pumpkin

vines - more like supreme
masters of our paths, our
physical universe swathed
in gold-studded arms.

We will gather them up
thank each tendril for its
work, fill the Tidy Bin, thus
pay for summer's rain.

Next year we'll do vertical.