Collage

for Sue McDougall

They are definitely

mountains. Torn edges

explain erosion, uplift,

crashing and banging

into the ones already

settled. Roughly mounted

and pale blood colour,

they invite fingering

yet linger untouchable

behind cold flat glass.

The artist was a collage.

Poetry, portraits, person -

you couldn't sit for her

without the verse of reason

turning your face to the brush.

Impasto? A hint. All

other depths described

as cold flat symmetry.

She has forgotten now

how she understood you.

CHOCOLATE

Without an address book 

I can't call you. 

There are more kilometres than I trust

between your starting point and mine.

You emailed: "Unless I hear from you

I'll be there" for conversations sweetened

by cake, chocolate and surviving fifty years

knowing there are some distances 

new technologies just cannot bridge

some uncertainties conquerable only by

a teenage pact to always be friends.

Over hot chocolate with chili

stirring the chocolate glue

we agree to exchange mobile phone numbers.

The real test is keying them in.

After the Lerderderg Library is Officially Opened

Of course, that sulphur-crested commentator
just had to express "his" opinions from the top
of the leafless elm.

And now, near dusk, the cuckoo shrike
makes its move on the feast otherwise known
as my verdant garden.

The honeyeaters have gorged themselves
the pigeons and sparrows hunched together
as "Old World" birds do.

The trees are suddenly still.
Bees, numbed by cold, gone.
A chirping announces fairy wrens!


"Of course, your garden's quite a jungle, Jen".
But safe. Cat-free at last (perhaps trespassers
all died). Safe.

The leucodendrons lose light
as last light flees to the sky
and everything rests.

Hang on, it's still winter
Walking up the slope from town
blessed by perfumed vines, their scents
drawn into my clothes

fitover sunglasses
keeping my eyes dry, not watery
from glare. Going home

to a garden full of honeyeaters
in the flowering gums, bees
on the rosemary ...

only the heat indoors reminds me
the air is still chill to my mother
shawled, sleeping in her favourite chair.

 Free Verse Weekend

I came to my blog and found treasures in other people's. Nevertheless, hay fever is dominating my experience of life right now. More WATER.

1.
Clogged after drought
water pools, leaks into communal
drains, stays there, backed up.

2.
If he who dribbles ink
is eating poetry, I without
sense of smell or sanity
am cooking it.

Have decided to write about WATER some more. I often walk by our local rivers, I spent 10 years as a child living by a big river, and I spent several years living in a bayside town. It is hard to put into words what "water" actually means to me, it is so much part of my own bloodlines. Isn't that true for all of us?

FLASH FLOODS

Elsewhere in the country
tragic losses - people,
land, livelihoods. I loved
the picture of young men
playing a piano salvaged
from mud.

We who walk the once-
swamplands are glad
someone created channels
the waters could fit into
find a direction in
be fully self-expressed
as rivers.

Photographs catch an
aftermath, a mere suggestion
of force exercised - tossed
saplings, reed slapped on fence
a tight weaving, admirable in any
gallery, museum.

The silence
of drowned frogs cannot
be photographed.
Can it be we who have
engineered this local
and sudden extinction?

Or the way things are
simple as artistry
plain to the eye
uncomplicated by fear,
past trauma, story.
Part of a process we'll
never fathom.

I'm back. To dance with my love, the poetic foot, the sway of language, its raw-throat song and silky spells.

WATER

Take a tumble
submit
you are a stone, smooth
a carrier of river history
go with the flow, roll
make new statements
sit together
force the flood
having abandoned you
to flow around
to lick you, hungry
subservient
until some rain somewhere
powers the next
irresistible torrent.