Wind circles

The wind quickens the trees
twisting the gleam in little circles.

The trees
shuffle their heads full of green
friction of leaves.

The wind shifts
all around the world
in miraculous rings.

Here it shivers on summer
chilled in the melting Antarctic.

The grass mutters, the guttering groans,
bird whistles displaced
from wall to gate.

The wind is discontented.
It cannot stand in any one place
for any length of time.

It stirs the pedestrians’ minds to flight,
it whips up sagas with twisted plots

and impossible endings
then begins again.

Kintzukuroi

A pot falls

on hard ground

of rock and stone.

(Hear it smash!)

 

Shards burst

forever and never

seen on earth or sky.

(Let them fly!)

 

What remains,

bound for mortar

mixed with gold.

(See it shine!)

 

Coherent sits

the kintzukuroi pot,

a piece of parts

and gold.

Love and art

Loving is an art:

but I ask you, what is art?

 

Intangible qualities attach

to a habit, a pattern, a lattice

that allows improvisation

a mad brush, a breath of soul.

 

If your soul were a vision

what colour would you be?

Warm or cool, could you name it?

 

If tangible what texture,

silken or bristled?

 

And what shape:

are you a swan

or a brindled bat?

 

Give me a frame to suit you:

are you circular or square?

A triangle perhaps.

 

And as for composition

do you dominate the foreground,

or is that you

slipping away to the left?

 

Only a detail of your face remains.

Only your finger with that curious ring.

 

And then you’re gone,

a memory – that’s all.

 

I recall the day, that hour, that light,

when your voice first touched me,

the imprint irrevocable.

 

Love, I discern the edge of you glowing and hazy.

I might force the search for a definite line.

I might make of you an image never dreamed.

But love unfree is never love to me.

 

 

Rain comes to Australia

Crickets sing in the wet grass

behind the garden tap.

Crickets sing in the geraniums’

joyous greenery.

Rain strafes the streets of the cities.

Hail like golf balls pelts the lawns.

Rain douses the fires of Australia.

Rain quenches the drought-dry heart of Australia.

Rain saves us. Thunder and lightning 

spell the word of God.

Rain has come to douse the fires of Australia.

Thank God for the rain.

Smoke

A pall descended on St Kilda 

has bleached the high summer day.

White cirrus floats in a white sky

on a breeze from the east – Gippsland ablaze.

The scent of wood smoke appals

stealing through the summer night

in at the window from the burning forest.

Out of control the bushfires

burn the country down.

Animals scream to extinction

and the trees and the trees and the towns

Mallacoota, Mago, Cobargo

melted into the ground.

I cannot stand the scent of a winter hearth

and a billion creatures dead in agony.

I cannot count the cost of a hard heart

that loves a lump of coal more than a planet.

Dramatis Personae II

Add caption

Moon play

The moon’s hare sits on her haunches,

her ears a-glimmer with night.

She leaps in circles around the earth.

Such a shadow play, a movie! 

Silhouettes flicker on a gleaming

silver screen round as an eye.

Dear moon, bright moon, look down

with your hare-filled eye. Let your light

swim into the garden like a little fish.

Spangles splash among the shadows,

silvering the weeds.

Dazzling bright, stung with light.

 Hare on her haunches sits. 

An ear flops over her eye.

Down into the garden I go after midnight

not knowing how, somnambulant, white shining.

I fly along Punt Road to catch the late, late,

late-night bus.  A car near misses.  I am nearly

white shine on the asphalt.

The moon long set lies chuckling under the earth.

Like lava, but cold.

A rock with a hare-filled eye.

Heart a glitter

Sunshine through the rain-hazed pane
shatters into rainbows.

What of perfect form —
an arc, a circle, a perfect
diffraction?

A world in a window
haloed to distraction.

Light like love
ensouls an old rose.
Colours spill on the cold stone.

The summer sun sets
in a riot of rose.

The rain-hazed pane
is blooming.

Tribute to Women at St LuJa, St Kilda Art Crawl

Ghost baby

Possum on the balustrade
holds on with tiny hands,
possum tail hanging
under the yellow porch light

with a ragged coat and a gammy eye
looking like something resurrected
from the sodden earth
under the fallen leaves

as if a ghost baby had climbed the stairs
on mincing feet and sits and stares
curious outside my door
as if we'd known each other
years before.