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.