Off the Cuff 30: Meditations on Letting Go & Gratitude

APAD 30    prompt: "letting go"

Meditations on Letting Go


1.
Low weak sun insists
we let go of summer
let winter squeeze through
curtain gaps.

2.
Last night, driving,
my father's hands reaching
through time's curtain; I still
regret not being there
to hold them.

3.
And where is my daughter
going? Come back, my hands
implore, stay young, stay
home, stay smiling.
She massages my head
and hands. She smiles.
And yet, she is going.

4.
My worst nightmare
involved being on high dry land

hundreds of feet above ground
all around me the drop:

I would stop the fall through
sheer will. Why not let go?

5.
Why not let go?
Regret makes you
slow. To be fast
don't fasten, hasten
just let go
of the past.
Good advice to self
so often shelved.

6.
My mother tells me
the newspaper reports
at least one hundred and seventy
people, mostly women, of course
aged over the century are
alive in our state, Victoria.
My mother, almost eighty-four
aims to reach the dizzy heights
not let go of life, be
one of the select
to reach her centenary, and like
Agave americana, bloom again.

7,
Ferns and herbs renew.
Birth, maturity, death
for the rest of us.


Gratitude

you, plump
artefact of desire
you over-ripe melon
you soft sac:
so happy I didn't
lose you to
surgeon's cuts
happy to feel you
floppy survivor
feel your painful
reminders yet
feel the lack of
weight, absence
which makes my heart
grow fonder
feel free to take you
to bed, free
of the fear
breast
cancer bred.

 NaPoWriMo  30

Off the Cuff 22: Earthly Concerns & The Massive Comb-Over

APAD 22    prompt: an Earth poem

Earthly Concerns

There are only three things
poets write about, he says:
love. death. landscape.

By day we drive back
saying, so this is what
it looks like: sandy, dead.

Late at night, on the way,
we were comet riders, burning
a hole in the blackness.

You play with my hair
as I drive; you say it's all good
whatever I decide. 

We are earthed in over eighteen
years of travelling together,
looking for Orion's belt again

exploring the contours of love
mother and daughter, earthbound
guessing the messages of the heavens.


The Massive Comb-Over

Laughter.
Cooing and patting.
What's the matter?
(I'm irritated)
Look in the mirror
Mum. Your hair!
Laughter.
(I see what
she means!)
Ruffling, she lets
my hair look
a little less
proper.

NaPoWriMo 22

Off the Cuff 21: According to the weather report & Maps of the Murray

APAD 21   prompt: "According to __________"

According to the weather report
we are driving into storms and showers.
It is Autumn and warmer than we expect.
No complaints: Mikaela and I
pack for our trip, steadily, quietly,
peaceably. We will stop for meals,
sing along to Joni Mitchell. We can
weather any storm, drive west
with a car full of bedding, poems
and antique t-shirts, turning
our experience into wordless prose.


Maps of the Murray

It's like a swag, this red bag
the rolled up conversations
from nineteen years ago.

She wasn't born then, was
a blob of rapidly multiplying
cells. She was born into

travelling, being brave
in the face of humankind's
worst fear: talking to people.

I take her with me as a
talisman. The poems are older
than (her) time, the river ageless.

I travelled upstream then
stopped where peaches and cream
were cause for celebration.

This festival is to celebrate
conversation about conversation.
Timeless, age-old, renewable.

Off the Cuff 19: Found Out & The Pinchy Boy

Found Out

Two small boys dash
along the pavement.
Off to school!
"Late!" my daughter says.
"They're early!"
"I mean the ones not
scooting to school.
I mean the waggers
in the skateboard park."
"Oh."

"That's one thing I never did,"
she says after that slight pause.
"Skateboarding? Scooting?"
"No, wagging."
"Yes," I say, "You did become a
conscientious attender."
(Smug mother)
"Yeah," she says, "When I was
a conscientious attender, I
never wagged. I just
pretended to be sick."

I laugh.
She looks a little peaky.


NaPoWriMo 19


The Pinchy Boy

Nameless other than that.
No wonder he pinched.
Made the girls cry. Little
misogynist. Or practical
tear-jerker addicted as
an arsonist, and boys
don't cry, won't cry.

Pinched my sister, not
me, unaware of other
victims. Perhaps she
asked for it? Her dress
too short, shorts too
tight, attitude to nudity
flagrantly punishable?

I wonder what became
of him, who he became?
After Kindergarten and
all that playtime, how
did he fare? I wonder, too
whether my own son was
ever named The Bitey Boy.

Will I one day read a poem
or short story in a feminist
collection, charging my boy
with politically incorrect
hungers? Or see a movie about
both: Skin Lovers Beware!?

APAD 19   prompt: name of person as title

Off the Cuff 17: Crossing the Westgate Bridge & A lifetime of being in & out of love for Melbourne Ch 5

APAD 17    prompt: a science poem

Crossing the Westgate Bridge

Meteorology: low cloud, no rain,
still air, a tattered wind sock.

Climatology: the ponds below are still
and green, despite heavy rain, storms,
hail, anything the frantic Earth
can throw at us.

Seismology: there may be earthquakes
or tremors associated with tectonic plates.
Our vibrations are the impact of heavy traffic.

Engineering: impossible to imagine
the breakdown in synapses that leads to
suicide off this height, or filicide
by a man driving his own children
West to East.

Geomorphology: this asphalt road
must have come from somewhere
extinct and volcanic.

Urban Geography: pretend statistics
mean anything. Ahead, three and a half
million people. Go on, imagine it.
Then move to Mumbai and imagine that.

Biochemistry: somehow all
the competition for lanes
disappears. We drive
at the speed flashing lights
insist upon.

Historical Geography: at least twenty-seven workers
with families and possible futures died constructing
this link. No plaque in neon. No memorial day.
Instead the signs flash: Lane Closures.
Workers inside bridge. Progress.

Human Geography.


A Lifetime of being in or out of love for Melbourne

Chapter 5   2003  Oakleigh

One brief attempt
to embrace urban
benefits: a decent
school for daughter
regular visits by son.

The week we leave
involves landlord's
displeasure: we had
not cut grass, the
front and back yards

were as wild
as we felt, as
natural as life
in the suburbs
tries to be.

NaPoWriMo  17

Off the Cuff 16: Anzac Day Approaching & A lifetime of being in & out of love for Melbourne Ch 4

APAD 16    prompt: a death poem

Anzac Day Approaching

Of course we are grateful
for the difference they made
if only they would wake up
and hear us playing the Last
Post, over and over and over.
Responding to the call only
made them dead, not different
and not made a difference to.

One headline dares to speak:
War raged on in digger's head.
We call them diggers. This one
had to dig himself out of an
early grave from drinking
to drown out the replays.
No question of questioning
the battalions of death.

Let us create a First Post:
a bugle call to recognise no
difference between each of us
and this plant which has won
the competition for light
a duck in hunting season
that locust invasion.  Let us
celebrate real transformation.


A Lifetime of being in and out of love for Melbourne

Chapter 4   1991-99

Brought my girl and boy to Elsternwick
loved the child care and travelling without
car. Shared three houses with great people
before the kids demanded independence.
Into a secure flat, roomy, in South Yarra
with gourmet pizzas, Melbourne High School
and parks. After that era, every place we lived
was less wonderful.

Brought my girl and boy to Melbourne
after the Fringe Festival work in Broome.
Worked everywhere in Victoria the first
four years, on a leash, always returning
with relief. Then to South Melbourne
daily, close to home, the other relief of
regular income, short trips home at night
a balcony garden.

My boy played saxophone and cricket
said he wanted to live in a High Rise
apartment in the CBD when he grew up.
I said to myself , "I want to work overseas."
My girl said, "I want to come too."
(As they do.) Anzac Day 2000 we landed
in Wellington, New Zealand. The boy
stayed put, boarding.


NaPoWriMo  16

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