riverwalks:

 

 

the shadows weave in and out of light

steal twigs and leaves

have ripples as echoes of fish thoughts

the footprints of insects

given over to mundane contemplation of food

and shelter

 

understands the best way to avoid the rain

is to be water

accept each drop as a gift, swell

with pride, roar with stories

and carry the load

to all aspects of life

 

banks for security

contain their own ripples

stay still, move occasionally

paint offerings

glimpses into light

and movement

 

heard in the sad lament

rocks stuck within make

as water washes away dreams

takes all edges

and curbs them into a sameness

of direction.

mother had kelp for hair

that flowed behind

in ringlets of finger-points

directing eyes to this stairwell

that corner even beneath the bed

in the ark

where the ocean waited

as patiently as winter sap

 

mother floated into my dreams

wearing hessian denials

toenails scrapping the heart’s walls

drawing a chorus of could-be’s

to paint the floor

footprints glowing into the gaps

between her eyelids

 

she is still alive

living somewhere out beyond the atolls

salt-crusted

eyes searching horizons

for mushrooms and lightning strikes

 

in my boat of suits and shirts

I search for her

untangling ties that strangle

and a briefcase with teeth

as sharp as a river’s edge

Screamlines:

 

 

 

There is no dreaming

only a turning around

ahead awaits the white wall of shock

where truth and facts

hang corded beliefs out to dry –

 

Oh it all comes back

this way, time is not a linear progression

but a spiral up and down;

 

in ancient caves people sat

spoke in whispers about cities so large

the world was devoured, placed their hands

in coloured earth made wet with spit and piss

marked the walls

a warning to all who follow

all who precede

beware the clocks of civilisation

they can never be sated but must

as all monsters know

grow and grow and grow

until all explodes into a desert

or flood.

 

Doves drop brittle twigs

hoping to build a forest

to hide the world from view.

 

 

he believed he was a rabbit:

 

Sat in the middle of the playground
on haunches
his sandals full of marbles
lifted from games while thumbs and eyes
focused on the twirls of colour
in spherical glass stories

teachers told him
to stand as other children did
empty his pockets of food
he harboured – nibbled carrots
and celery reminded him of the dentures
singing in a watered glass
beside his grandfather’s bed.

He remembers the sound of the old man’s chest
an ocean that lifted and plunged
into words he barely understood
before it fell still, left behind a storm
that never broke and a smell
he was not able to wash away.

Sadness grew around him
in tufts of sweet grass ready for him to chew
while others played football or chasey
he hunched low, nibbled his bottom lip
with his two front teeth
rubbed imaginary twin ears
with hands clubbed
to resemble paws

waited
for his mother’s voice to call him
into boyhood again.

Every day at three thirty
he raced to her car
the sound of children’s voices filling him – tears
falling with an absence of sound
into the whirlpool of tomorrows.

the art of rolling stones:

The stones inside were small,

jagged

cut discord into words,

gestures and the lust that followed;

a shadow, a wolf, a breeze

sickly sweet, a touch too warm

for sleep.

 

The stones inside grew

smoothed

sought peace in words

art and an acceptance

that found laps, rested, purred, a breeze

tangy; scent of lemon myrtle

for dreams.

 

The stones rest upon eyelids,

draw the curtains

place the feet on a stool,

words a drool; the fool

now understands life’s a breeze

that whispers truth

behind loud footsteps.

we are Thomas

The thing that is needed

is for everyone

to roll up their proverbial sleeves

(hemp not cotton, please)

hold our eyes to the wound –

none of this looking down or to the side –

and push, push hard

into the gaping lesion,

listening all the time

to the whispers of the earth.

 

Place your hand into that polluted fissure

feel the pain

feel the lament of extinction

feel the grasses replaced by weeds

the trees replaced with wheat

the soil replaced with sludge

the wetlands now dry

the forests now roads

the rivers now sewers

the ocean now a collector of plastic…

 

And believe, you doubters, believe!

 

It appears it is only when our fingers

encounter the relentless damage

that our kind can cast aside

The cloak of doubt and believe.

 

We did this.

We strung this sacred planet up.

We sought Calvary not restoration,

greed not mutual benefit.

 

Can we lay down our doubt, then

and believe that the earth is dying

and will be reborn

but  that we…we will not be so lucky.

The Memory tree - a children's story...I think....

The Memory Tree:

 

He was an unusual…boy?

She was not sure… girl?

Just as likely…

 

What made her or him different though

was the manner of remembering.

 

He or she had no memories inside.

 

Instead, the memories

to be recollected

grew amongst the leaves of the most beautiful orange tree.

 

She

or

He

 

would pluck an orange each morning

when the bright yellow sun

was rising in the beautiful blue sky

 

peel away the rind

lick the juices off fingers

with tongue and lips.

 

He

or

She

 

devoured one memory only

every day.

 

Some days the memory

was of a pale green house with smoke

coming out of the chimney.

 

Or a hill

covered in red and blue parrots who squawked

stories at each other

 

Sometimes it was a train ride

in a big sea-green train with wheels that shone

and a funnel for the steam

with tracks that ran

beside the seaside.

The rattling of the wheels on the tracks

matched the water

that rolled out and back.

 

It was like

living a life

afterwards

 

or backwards in time to before

the orange

was an orange

 

before it was a flower, white and smelling as sweet

as morning dew

 

or a bud that unfolded and drew

the bee inside.

 

Back to when

the tree was bare

and the sun was hidden

by clouds.

When rain fell like the words of a song

and her or his life

had just begun.

 

Each evening

as the sun grew heavy and decided to rest

taking off its bright yellow coat

to be replaced with silk pyjamas

of the deepest blue

 

She

or

He

 

would climb into the fork in the middle of the orange tree

nestle in

feel the two boughs of the tree

hug with love

and encourage him

or her

to dream of the memory that waited

to be discovered

in the orange

the very next day.

the end.

autumn holiday

 

My sister and I only,

the youngest in the shadows

too young for company

ahead, the rest have outgrown us.

 

I eat a mandarin, she

had chosen an apple

each of us take a bite

before the upward arc.

 

We have escaped, discovered

evergreen trees that grew flat

on top; these, springy and dense,

we turned into trampolines.

 

We jump and jump

me up and down

her further and further

into a desire to join the others –

 

Once musketeers

who shared the stage together

a space opened and separated us

for some years.

Memories are like oranges…

 

Days litter the tree

ripe and heavy, golden oranges

plucked – at night I see

the little child, knees knocking

like twigs in the wind

it is the distance that surprises,

the ladder needed to reach out

and pluck, hold, bring close to the nose

smell and then the thumbs pushed in

the orange prised apart

juices everywhere, devoured then

until each half is a peel turned inside out

the flesh stuck to teeth, to hands.

 

The mind yearns until one day

the mind is marooned

in that tree, the world far down below

sometimes a fall; mind lands in the present.

 

Mother does that

and then slips away again, up into that tree

surrounded by oranges

leaving children stranded below

craning necks, watching her shrink

into her past and the future without.

idylls of Rosebud

 

Blanket of sand cleaned each night

ready for feet to travel to and from the sea,

the sea shallow, parents’ relief, mothers

relinquish control for a time

to safest of waters, ankles, sometimes knees

but only at a cost of effort,

ideal for young bodies, the older seek

the back beaches for waves and surf boards,

listen to the scream of freedom

in every smashed wave upon forlorn rock;

stranded Odysseus, separated by years,

not wax and rope, from the headland 

community where they once belonged.

 

Flounder flicker in the shallows,

searched by torchlight at night, wood with nails

roped to secure, enough to spear

miniature fish in the minds of children as wild

and ready as shark or orca; plenty of toadies

too, those braggarts of the foreshore

who carry a bloated belief poison will protect,

the pier littered with their flopping dreams

that ebb away leaving behind crusty scales

and eyes that see only what has been left.

Sometimes three or four children pause

before a fresh scene of death, stare down

at the bloated caricature of oceanic freedom.

 

The wind blows the sand for hours and days,

takes fragments, hurls them into eyes and ears;

each morning the beach is the same

and unique every day for every footprint.

 

Sometimes an ant pretends purpose

lost in the boulders it tried to cross

beneath the surface tiny lions wait for the ant

to fall into their dish, wait with an angel’s patience

for the ant to relinquish the fight, settle

at the bottom and wait for the crush.

 

Spade and buckets carry sand and water

for castles and rivers, roads and buried bodies;

a hundred heads rest, stare at feet

below the surface bodies wreak havoc

until sand caves in, the whole thing repeats.

 

For hours I swam in that water, day after blue sky day,

roasted black and tender with salt,

language forgotten, stories imagined, 

crashing one into the other until mother’s voice 

demanded a return to boyhood, standing at the edge 

she holds a towel, smiles, remembers, I suppose, 

her own trips as a child, the games played 

in the same waters of Rosebud.

xmas (3)

After the explosion…stillness,

paper torn, tape remembers

clutching things within,

lost now to the light, the secret is out.

 

Sit on the floor, chairs taken

by bigger bodies, one brother shows a shirt

that will never be worn, another a book

or a new record by the wrong band.

 

Some already gather the scraps…

 

Promises never fulfil; the harvest

has been lost, replaced with bright colours,

tinsel wrapped boxes, bows

that hold nothing, good things

only become apparent in later years –

none came gift wrapped.

coming home at Christmas

 

Years take us away, childhood

brings us back;

December mid-morning,

sun threatens to explode overhead,

walking up the winding road

to a house that was never my home

but is now theirs

I see the old man mowing –

the years I could gather

like seed

if I counted the times

I have seen the old man mowing

and on the porch old mum

waves a tea towel,

I have seen an ocean of tea towels waving,

all colours,

all fashions paraded through the ages.

 

Between the old man

and the old mum,

in the shimmering tar beneath the sun

I see shadow spaces, seven in all,

where once children ran and pushed, shouted and

cried at an injustice then laughed at a joke.

 

Where are all we now, broken

like rocks under the fury,

and yet

brought home by currents, sand

washed up

every Christmas at their shore.

sand in the crotch

The sun

rests low and sullen

in the west, the heat of the seat

sticks my towel to my back

I feel the tassels scratching

between my shoulder blades,

travelling home in the car

heat sits on the chest

like a heaving dog

windows down but the wind

causes lips and cheeks to blister

no relief

the sand caught in places not wanted

but being squashed between brothers

hands cannot ease the discomfort

of grains rubbing against skin as if my flesh

was the lamp of a bothered genie.

Guy Fawkes night

Anticipation unravels the set mind

creates havoc with intention;

the child’s mind succumbs

to timeslips –

last year’s rockets

and Catherine wheels,

the feel of the tom thumbs and penny farthings

the heat from the fountain

the joy of name-writing sparklers

makes the gap a trap…

 

mother, father,

I cannot sit still and wait for the sun to set

mother, father,

can the heavens not be a blind

pulled down this evening

so I can swim once again

in the chaos and colour

the noise and smell

the howling, yelling, laughing night

of Guy Fawkes!

mother (7)

I see mother, see your forgetful mind

has forgotten me now but not as I was

in the days of spring then summer

when the grass beneath my feet

entered through the skin into the veins

traveling up through the body’s secret passages

into the heart and mind. I see mother

 

the confusion in your eyes –

who is this old man before you now?

You see the child who plays in your garden

toys and sticks forming a world

amongst flowers and insects, his knees

bare beneath the legs of his shorts, dirty again,

his eyes bright with creation. I see mother

 

my old man voice startles you

until it manages clumsily

to take you back to the voice

that called out from the snare of a nightmare

or sang in that familiar kitchen

and laughed at your playful tricks

when April the First came around every year.

 

When I hold your hand mother

I watch as you look down and even your hand

is a stranger, until memory slips away the veil

and now your hand, the larger of the two,

holds mine as we stand at the street’s edge

watching carefully the cars pass

so we can cross to buy dinner for the family.

 

And where once when I was little

and we were on an outing, pancake

and tea at Coles that does not exist anymore,

you held me when the diesel train screeched,

unstopping through the station –

now I fear you hear a screech and my offer

of comfort is dismal and inadequate.

 

Leaving then, as I must,

leaving then, knowing you will forget 

this moment, knowing each time I drive 

away the distance is such

that I can never truly bridge the gap

but must watch it grow ever larger

in your fading, sad eyes.

 

I want you to know I remember also

when you were young and I

was younger still, when the world

spun easily and the days

were strung up in the brightest sun

like freshly washed clothes

upon the revolving clothesline.

mother (6)

marooned at the front window,

the little boy stands in shadow behind

silent, patient as the mouth

that knows the words are right

even before they are uttered.

 

Mother waits for a daughter

a roamer, a wanderer, feet

that take the child far, far from home

into the undergrowth, the forest

the realm of wolf and wildebeest.

 

Mother’s right hand crinkles quietly

the Venetian that blocks her view,

eyes moist with fear or revelation

study the street lit

by the flicker of the florescent.

 

The occasional growling car

passes, voices cry out – who is calling?

To whom?

Children about to drown

or in the act of discovery?

 

Cars are horrible emissaries

of the devil; steal keys and promises,

carry children to places 

a parent cannot journey

even those that know the path well.

 

The daughter’s voice is heard, the echo of her appearance,

mother releases the Venetian, breaks the spell,

I turn and flee back to bed,

head on pillow, slip into a dream

I hardly know or understand.

Do children still spin?

Hot summer night

the stars so bright a hand should

be able to pluck them

to adorn a hat or coat.

 

The creature stirs within

when the nights are warm

the sky clear

and school is over for the year.

 

Primordial, the beast fanged and clawed

stalking the aorta

rummaging in the stomach region

forcing voices loud as thunderclaps

feet to step and leap

hands to slap and clap.

 

The creature’s release is in the spin

arms flung wide

head tossed back and eyes closed

for as long as dared.

 

The spin weaves the brain

away from thought

from words and lessons and

conscious creation.

 

Around and around

feet propelling the spin,

the creature driven to explode

outwards into the cosmic bang.

 

The body hits the earth

arms again wide

mind spinning

and the world’s weight

an embrace –

humans have roots too.

I never went to kindergarten

 

every day I sat

on the Hooper’s front porch

waited for Ian to come home

from kindergarten

without needing to know

what kindergarten was

or why I didn’t have it

 

I wanted to play

and when he came home

we played

 

unless he was too tired

then I would wait some more

time is infinite

until it isn’t.

peripheral living

There were several children gathered,

cousins and almost cousins

playing cards,

imitating the parents inside –

children are the lyrebirds of the human world

adopt tone and stance to perfection; once

I copied my mother’s words and tone,

cried out from her lap,

“hurry up Mick.” Father entered

pretending to undo his belt.

It was a joke but not for me

I fled, crying like a corned fowl,

hours later mother found me

but reactions can never be undone.

 

In that circle a children’s game

played out – the thing remembered

is not the game, nor words

nothing except the way the un-cousins

stared at two of the cousins, those two

were engaged in a losing battle

to maintain their eyesight;

could only see their cards peripherally.

 

Grownups imitate those two cousins,

pretend to see reality

but adult eyes are always slightly turned

so instead of seeing truth

they watch the peripheral shadows

and never have to say a word

about what is actually seen.

pram rides through miniature worlds

 

Mother knew the child’s mind

how still emergent, a pearl

remembering the clam,

the child’s mind echoes

with the twilight sounds of the womb.

 

No one needed to explain to mother

the child’s mind

preferred miniature marvels

to the titanic artifacts man creates

almost in defiance of that earlier, innocent state.

 

For the day’s special journey, Mother

would ready the pram

then she and I would roam the neighbourhood

visiting the sacred front gardens

created for a child’s delight.

 

Tiny cottages hidden between towering flowers,

a windmill beside a pansy,

lakes large as two ice-pole sticks laid

end to end, two storey houses

for beetles and bugs to inhabit.

 

For hours she pushed me

around the streets visiting each of my favourites

or discovering a new one,

houses and bridges smaller than a moth’s wingspan

waiting for eyes to feast where feet could not.

 

At night, in bed, the walls cracking in the heat,

staring up at the ceiling, imagined

inhabiting a motionless miniature setting

still and silent, bloated with expectation,

safe in time and space.

.

sticks and stones

My skin had the capacity,

when I was young

and the ozone was still whole

and the sun friendly, not harsh,

to turn dark in summer.

 

I would find time

before the beach holiday to lie

outside and soak like a reptile

in the rays,

dream myself away from time and space

into a red shifting land of puzzles and flight.

 

People would look at me

tanned skin on display in shorts and singlet

and call me abo or darkie - it hurt me nought;

it is nothing to be called something

when you are not

when the comment is only about the tan you have acquired

and not

the person you are, the associated

forest of faults and failures and reasons

you can be treated differently.

 

When I was a boy

tanning myself those distant summers

of long ago I had a book,

the flora and fauna of Australia.

Along with kolas and paperbark

were pictures of aborigines –

part of the wild landscape (there is the insult)

and in that book

if you held it close to your ear

I am certain you would hear a faint whisper,

“black lives matter,”

but it was the sixties and the call

was only heard by a few,

the rest told Abo jokes

while stealing their children,

their stories, land and sacred sites.

 

When I was young and innocent

and knew in winter I would be white again

the words touched me not;

sometimes now I wake

regret the Medusa able to turn me to stone,

unable to change the way it was

and still wishing I could.

The new room that was always there

 

The house was built, with the knowledge

and careful forethought, for the arrival

of the day when the waste could connect

to the magic pipes below.

 

All of us children of that time and in that place

remember the backyards dug, the trenches

laid out like archaeological digs; we recall

the many games we played in that earth.

 

In the beginning we lived with the outhouse

and the strong man who came up the drive

ushering in the new can

and removing the overladen old.

 

Inside was a room, just by the back door

on the right side, a room

that had no meaning except a thought

that in the future it would exist.

 

That room once held an assortment

including, but not exclusively,

an Indian tent

mops, brooms and boxes.

 

A small room I could hide in while others searched

even though they always found me,

I was the sort who would rather be caught

than spend an eternity waiting for victory.

 

I could never be a room such as that room

waiting patiently, being many things

but all things done quietly,

no fuss, no stamping and yelling.

 

That room understood the meaning of bide – instead

I followed the tide, out and in, a rush both ways;

never a small room, unlit, quiet, waiting

an allotted time for purpose to arrive.

The royal portrait – twice.

Three siblings lined up behind the two chairs, dressed

in their Sunday best, in a time when we only had one best

and the rest were clothes for school or for mess.

On the two chairs, the eldest two siblings named after parents,

the two M’s, the eldest female the next male and perched,

newly crowned with a shock of black hair and eyes that stare

without understanding, a six-month-old me, the newest,

surveying his dominion without a care. Seven years pass

and the siblings line up again this time four, me on the end,

not the throne, that place now taken by the youngest

sitting as I once did on the lap of the eldest, staring

as I once did, without a care; my eyes, if you search

behind the curtain of a broad smile, seem certain that

what lies in the years ahead cannot be taken for granted.

fuchsia magellanica

The bush that made bees

grew outside our front steps.

Three concrete steps

and depending on the mood

I had sat on each –

the first for gloom

the middle for talking

the third for summer nights

and star gazing –

 

beside the steps

the bush with odd flowers

that drooped,

began as tiny closed bags

that hung and grew and grew

fatter and fatter as if a caterpillar

grew inside

but I knew better,

someone had told me

or I had come to the fact on my own

each little parcel that dangled and expanded

contained a bee.

 

When I was not watching

never when I did and I did

the parcels would spring open

and the inside creature escaped capture

leaving behind a little flower

like a bush of tiny vases

stolen from some mother’s miniature kitchen.

 

The bush was the birthplace of the bees

that buzzed constantly around the bush

then spread from there out

to go gold digging

in the rest if mum and dad’s garden.

size (2)

Atop a neighbour's front porch roof

flat, corrugated tin catches the sun

so small feet tingle;

below the ground flat and hard

dares the test.

 

In the distance voices provoke,

I am the last to leap;

fear is something we cannot share

separates us one and all –

feet farewell tin…

 

hit the ground

swifter than the mind can predict

roll and stand, smile;

nothing is harder

than that first leap.

brother (4)

Sleeps on the crinkled tin

of the chicken coup roof

of the people next door

or ours if theirs is busy
building another clutch of eggs.

 

Sleeps on the top backstep too

of a different neighbour’s abode, tucked up

like Moses in the warmth, carried away

until mother’s voice calls him

back from the lap of some Pharaoh’s daughter.

 

Sleeps during the days

snores at night

like a knight chasing errant armour;

I should know

my bed has been placed next to his.

 

I sleep during the day sometimes

on the concrete block in the backyard

where the outhouse used to be

before the sewerage finally came banging.

 

Watch the day drift away

and even now

a thousand outhouse days later

I sometimes find a couch or chair

and drift into the best of sleeps.

 

When the sun sits princely high

and the world for the moment

pauses not to dream

but a genuine pause as if,

like a shoelace, the day

 

is undone and then in time

securely retied again.