Off the Cuff 29: And suddenly working & Autumn etc

  APAD 29    prompt: "And suddenly __________"

And suddenly working

One hour after I first press
the button to switch on power
my computer stops wheezing
and freezing and shutting
me out.

I've booted up
four times! That's like
four kicks up the butt,
but no sign of bruises. I sit here
hissing and snarling, sighing
and tutting until ...

I feel like kissing! As fingers
peck freely, and mouse clicks
skittishly, I put my catty paw
over the small silver mouse
begin to play with it.


Autumn (season), Bacchus Marsh (town)
Victoria (State) Australia (Country)

First mist of the season:
blurred views as I drive fast
homeward, nine in the evening.

A scatter of osage oranges
in Fisken Street, always inedible,
always a work of art, their falling.

Winter lettuces planted out
green and maroon in perfect
rows on several hectares.

The elms, which couldn't care less,
yellowing and stripping unwanted
summer attire. The subject

of complaints from those who
prefer traffic congestion through town
to redesigned roadways.

Inland, we've started keeping
the heating on until mid-evening.
Aeroplane lights white stars.

This is a photograph of one town
west of Melbourne where climate
is said to be "Mediterranean"

There's no sea. Our seasons
are agricultural, rural. But listen,
winter gales approach with stealth.

NaPoWriMo  29

Off the Cuff 2: A Water Poem & Flattening the State

April 2nd

APAD 2     prompt: a water poem

With all the rain, city floods, hailstones
causing roofs to cave in, it seems right
that reservoirs are refilling, resemble
dams again.

So as my daughter and I drive past
one of Lake Eildon's arms, we ask:
what's going on? where's the water?
the grass is green -

what happened here? Holiday homes
are perky, perched high above old
water level lines, banks cut away,
the floor covered

in grass and young gums, among
black skeletons of the ancestors.
Cars towing boats turn off as if
nothing's missing.

Oddly refreshing, these questions
after ten years' drought. Yet I am
nowhere near the source, for
easy answers.


Flattening the State

Driving along Hume Highway and
just before Curly Sedge Creek
we crane to see possible cover-up
criticise the cutaway half of a hill

mindful that Bacchus Marsh develops
in gaps between three quarries -
one for coal now abandoned; one
for sands, current site of realigning

freeway; and one still eating out
the lap of Lerderderg Gorge
accessed by a road called Pretty
Valley Lane. There's no valley now

because there's no hill. There's no
respite from dust in this town. We
are choking on our usefulness.
We are making money from dust.

New suburbs eat up the land
where land once produced food
flattening our vision of what is
possible as we cut and fill for progress.