PARALLEL

 

Milk of morning mist flows slowly

among the sandstone cliffs,

nourishing them in silence.

Morning slows,

and the mist loses form,

fading like a gentle memory.

 

In winter the milk flows freely

as liquid ambers lose their leaves.

Roads disappear beneath its shroud.

Mist’s heavy sibling, fog, arrives.

Come evening and the shadows climb

escarpments as they fall asleep.

 

The traveller's journey starts 

with mother's milk

scales the valley's walls in youthful strength

and ends in rest at dusk

in long and deep ravines.

HOLDING ON AND LETTING GO

 

It was how her right hand slipped from mine,

while she clung to the ladder with her left

as the chopper lifted

that became the nub of my nightmares.

 

We found her in Vũng Tàu

at battle’s end – hiding in my tent –

a tiny, shivering kid,

poorly clad.

 

In halting English, she told us

her family was dead.

She’d watched from the sidelines,

saw our paramedics work – and followed them.

 

Months in that apocalyptic jungle

and two mates had adopted dogs.

None had nurtured kids:

we kept her out of sight and fed.

 

Decades later after surgery in Sydney,

I woke woozy in Recovery.

Dr. Van, my surgeon, grasped my hand –

though I’d not met her pre-op.

‘We didn’t let you go,’ she smiled.

 

It was her –

then she was gone.

HANDS

 

I saw Gary’s hands when I was ten:

he taught me Sunday School.

He was a newly minted doctor:

I liked his gentleness and purpose

and wondered

what he might become?

 

His hands had soft black hair.

At home in bed that evening

I looked at my hands and

imagined them like Gary’s,

traced where the hair might grow.

I wondered, what would I be by then?

 

I took the medical path,

served briefly with the church in PNG.

Having seen what could be done

with jabs for whooping cough,

hygiene for gastro,

I moved to public health.

 

In time, my hands resembled Gary’s,

but now my hair is lost.

Game’s played; the score struck –

the sum of wins and losses.

My coin’s in the offering plate,

lesson’s done. Until next week.

SECOND WAVE

We planned to mark her birthday –

and visit her in her filing cabinet,

with its gracious gardens,

dim corridors of old-aged aromas

of faeces and this morning’s food,

groans and occasional cries from rooms.

This place had been her home

since her vision failed

four summers past.

There was nothing that grandma Jenkins didn’t see

despite her blindness, sensing precisely

changes in size and shape of family members,

alterations in tone of voice and itemising these

with the wit of wicked teasing

shifting the focus from herself

onto others to whom she had donated

genetic material, across three generations.

When we bade farewell,

her face – half smile, half sad – 

was a picture of the reverie of age.

Outside the littlest of our clan waved

goodbye, through her window

a gesture relayed to her by a carer:

she smiled and returned the sign.

Weeks later we returned

when the plague was active

and the filing cabinet was locked.

We could not visit or touch

and were confined outside.

She had the virus and was teetering,

short of breath and weak. 

We mourned among ourselves:

then the littlest who had waved before

wanted to wave again. This was arranged.

Soon to depart for other worlds,

grandma Jenkins was supported by a carer in a space suit.

A weak hand appeared at the window

together with a faint smile.

“That was my second wave!” the little one exclaimed,

in triumph as we drove home.

TO THE POINT

The US is a mess.

…….

MORTAL INSECURITY

Observe how sanitised an age

we’ve lived in – where death occurs

toward the natural end.

People slip away:

the mourners given therapy

to return smiling to their work.

It was not always thus

and even now, in slums and camps,

young die by thousands, day and night.

This was how it was when Rembrandt

was painting portraits of himself

that did not disguise the prevalence
of omnipresent death.

Now, fear has lifted scales from our eyes.

Three of us, my age, asked at lunch,

“Would we all survive”?

When eventually we revisit galleries

of paintings from before the 19^th century,

with their depictions of death and loss,

we will feel that we are in familiar territory –

The paintings have not changed

– we have.

THE EMPTYING

Cathedrals are almost empty.

God left by the western door 

leaving only occasional old women

to kneel, if they can, to share the vaulted space 

with gothic ghosts, dimly lit by windows 

stained with the memorial red and blue 

for sons lost in battle, saints in doctrinal wars.

The emptiness has spread in recent days.

New York’s wide streets and avenues are cold,

despite the summer sun. The people have gone,

fleeing before a virus 

that if it catches them, seizes their lungs 

and eats the bleeding tissue – stupidly, 

as it will die with its host.

There are bluebirds over

the white cliffs of Dover

because the trucks and planes have stopped.

The earth is doing fine.

What will emerge after we are lost?

A new creature, sentient – 

just as capable of guilt? 

I wonder.

 

“On a day when we celebrate trust in a life that succeeds, I am proud and happy to accept the invitation of the City and the Duomo of Milan,” said the artist, who has acted without an audience, in compliance with regulations. from the government on COVID-19.

“I believe in the strength to pray together. I believe in Christian Easter, the universal symbol of rebirth that everyone, believers or not, really needs right now.

“Thanks to the music, broadcast live, and bringing millions of hands together throughout the world, we will embrace the beating heart of this wounded Earth, a wonderful international union that is a source of pride for the Italian people. The city of Milan, which is generous, courageous and proactive, as well as the whole of Italy, will once again be very soon a winning model, engine of a rebirth that we all hope for. It will be a pleasure to witness it, in the Duomo, during the Easter celebration that evokes the mystery of birth and rebirth.”  

Andrea Bocelli – Easter 2020, Milan.

CELESTIAL VISITOR

I’m visiting from outer space

assessing how the human race

responds to challenges of virus

in ways that truly may inspire us.

I’m puzzled as to what’s at issue

necessitating toilet tissue.

I’ve seen shoppers with bent backs

lugging multidozen packs.

Is the paper to protect

From a diarrhoeal side effect?

Does coronavirus, now about,

also disrupt the sleeping gut?

Sadly, I can make no sense

of this elaborate defence.

No clue.  I cannot understand.

I’ll fly back home – and wash my hand.

Koala

She’s in the canopy now.

The ground, dry for years,

has given up:

flames are laughing

up and down the land.

As she climbed

her child fell.

There’s another kind of thunder now –

the rain should slake

the fire’s thirst –

then the search for food

and shelter can begin.

The Splash

This painting, by David Hockney,

sold for twenty-five million –

so bright

but snap-frozen of feeling.

I see something disappearing.

It sprang from the springboard –

perhaps the lost lover of the painter –

pushed into oblivion

by a perpetrator

who retreats south-east;

or maybe it’s that elusive thing called meaning.

Does he who bought the painting

understand the price of everything –

so much for water, this for sky –

and the value of nothing? 

Surfer's Tension

This bright summer morning

at sea, I kneel,

contemplating

which to choose –

this one or that –

the best wave to propel me,

to shallow water

and the shore.

I’ve come seeking solace,

escape from the tension

of pressing choices –

jobs, friends, family –

of responsibility versus freedom.

Waves of indeterminate strength

and direction surround me – foreign.

I’m not strong enough.

Then forces of circumstance take over:

my contemplation is drowned,

overturned by a dumping wave.

Challenges splash like freezing water.

How to survive, how to regain my board?

But then I’m off, racing to the shore,

a sailboat in a gale,

but no longer with a worry in the world.