Moon 11

Crust to Core

A rocket will puncture you or
at least scan you like an MRI.
We need to find out why
the moon is special, she says
radio waves not yet crackling
on my trip north.

Once reception goes, I'm left
wondering what she is looking for.
A cold or warm heart?
Solid as a rock,or liquid gold?

At our Community Meeting
last Monday, we discovered
our own lunar landscape just
waiting to happen, seventy percent
of the state under exploration
or mining licence. A landowner
gets the top two feet, the rest
right to the core is the Crown's.

It's so great being part of
the Commonwealth, where
wealth is not common at all.
Every huge step for mankind
becomes a small death
of something, somewhere.

I heard there is a planet
some millions of light years
out there possibly made
of diamonds. Another
great leap possible, another
possible loss
of the mystery-that-costs-nothing
and wealth that could be common.

30 Poems in 30 Days - Day 7
your relationship with something inanimate

This cheap whisky
drags me to bedtime.

Remember the absinthe?
That whole bottle we drank?
You weren't there when I asked
the theatre nurses if he was born
deformed by alcohol. They almost
slapped me instead of his bottom.

You know what it was like
in those days, double standards
not entirely distinguished
from integrity, and the fact
of being a woman. Or man.

I drink this whisky because
I couldn't after pregnancies.
The body upgrades, updates
its tolerances, its tastes.

But that's not the inanimate object
not yet. "I want a permanent solution!"
I said to the woman stretching
my muscles today, me grimacing
and breathing in and counting.
Remember the raw energy of love?

You weren't there when I wanted
to toast our happy accident.
I answered my own demand,
by the way: "I guess I'll get it
when I'm dead. The permanent
solution." She didn't laugh
immediately. There was what's called
'a pregnant pause'.

Sometimes I wonder at the way life works out.
You've stopped drinking. And smoking!  
You're married!?!?

Having invited me to your milestone
birthday party, is it possible
we might celebrate survival with a toast
sit at the same table at his wedding?

Remember the whisky we drank
whenever I drove the five hours to see you?
And cried - which men hate,OK, I've
come to terms with that - because
no amount of fuel, numbness, passion
could have us come together?

30 Poems in 30 Days - Day5
something impossible

Fifty thousand words, she says, come on,
you know you want to. A smile emoticon
blows up in my head, turns into that one
with the tongue hanging out, nameless.
Do it in between, she says, and I start to
consider my Outlook Calendar as
The Enemy. This just won't do!
And yet I do know I do want to.

I spend the next two evenings writing
just to see if I can make 1667 words
out of 0.

30 Poems in 30 Days - Day 4
a poem that includes a door opening or closing

I slam the car door, begin my Tuesday walk.
Greeted by willie wagtail, I ask, "Where's that
'sweet pretty creature'. Where's it gone?"
He or she answers with a singsong triple tweet.

The tail has not changed. Wags, encourages
the eye to stray from path to fence. I laugh.
Alone on this path, that's all right. I laugh loudly.
Jewelled long-tailed parrots paint the air.

Through the blackwood belt, and I could be
lost in deep forest. The charge of freeway traffic
breaks the spell. Blackbirds knowing the berries
come soon, balance on low branches, bold-eyed.

Between cypress hedge and fruit farm, red-beaked
finches teeter on barbed wire, are blown one by one
like scraps across the field. There is blossom!
And at last, in the Avenue of Honour, the elms.

Since last week's walk, the greening has begun.
Tree number 221, for Pte W Rogers, 3rd Pioneers
KIA 29 September 1918, had started then, is now
ahead of the game, frothier with new leaf, spring!

To my left, the streaks of lettuce beds sport fluoro
pickers in conical hats, so low they look like alien
flowers, or manna for foreign markets. Along
the fenceline, their shopping bags - Coles, Aldi,

BigW, are crammed with jackets and noodles
for lunch in the corrugated iron shed, seating 12.
Among the bags, four day packs, signs of wealth.
I exit the trail, unlock the car door, drive to work.

Moon 10

You are colouring the frills of cloud
with old ferrous bloodstains.

The swift bundles of frilled cloud
skirt around you as they pass.

Bold and clear, you outshine
all other heavenly bodies.

We are leaving the church where
Captain Moonlight pretended

to be a pastor, exhorted the fold
to be righteous, peaceable, neighbourly.

Then he rode away, unwilling to wait
longer for the gold kings are given,

stole it from the diggings, the poor.
We have been singing Steal Away

and other unaccompanied gospel
the acoustics making us weep.

Now we descend to our midweek-quiet
goldmine - Maccas - to sing in praise

of capuccino, milky tea, and the birthday
of Don, our bass, turning eighty.

Your whiteness makes dirty laundry
of the scurrying clouds, hurrying

to drop rain elsewhere, to leave you
sailing alone, singing of eternity.

Moon 9

This night I saw
your pregnant belly
and all the stars
like newly-hatched
spiders, connected
by white light.

I'm re-posting this; it's my first ever attempt at an ode; I'm not usually attracted to form, 

so it was a break from my normal free verse mode.. 

Ode To a High Flyer

My chirpy friend, your urgent voice
at first concerns, then I rejoice!
It's you, it's you, oh feathered one
patterned with bars of golden sun
and black as if singed by summer fire
and yet your voice is a veritable choir.

Urgent, you chirp, and swoop for gnat
Is this your greeting? Have you seen a cat?
Another swoop under the shade cloth's net

- a clean sweep with each pirouette.
As fast as you hunt and eat what you catch
I'm too humanly slow to be any match.

You dash, my friend, to higher perches
your days spent in these frenetic searches
for supremely delicate morsels too slow
to escape your arrowed flight, and shadow.
I stop my work, enthralled as you call
and amaze at the way you triumphantly trawl.

Yet you care not; what should I expect?
No more than those unfortunate insects
whose lives are short and shorter still
because you harvest, eat your fill.
You're not an especially social creature
are you, my sunny honeyeater?

Jennie Fraine 2011