SOLITARY CONFINEMENT

 

 

My room has white walls
Manacled with drips and catheters,
at night I conclude
I must be a prisoner
facing my last dawn,
the fatal shot up the cannula
What have I done?

I’ve had the temerity to get sick
that’s what.
Something’s wrong
with my gut.
I need ten days of antibiotics
through a vein.

Hour after hour the walls get to me,
screening silent episodes of my life.
I wait and wait for meals,
meds and obs.
Then there’s the TV -
it could be our family’s first.

“Hello childhood,”
it smiles, sparing me no pain,
“Remember me?”

THE CURSE OF UNNECESSARY WORK

 

A fine day in Eden:
it could have been California,
but Eve woke uneasy.
She sought out the snake
with whom she sometimes spoke.
He knew
this was the day to strike.

“You are bored,” he said,
and she immediately agreed.
“I have fruit for you,” he said,
“that will turn you into a god.”
She ate,
and saw that she was naked.

She took the fruit to Adam
and it worked its magic on him.
That evening God came walking,
but Adam and Eve hid.

 Expelled from the garden, they would,
God said, now need to work to eat.
“This was so avoidable:
if you had done as I said
you would still be in Paradise.
Unnecessary work
is now your curse.”

He took his leave.
Outside the gate
Adam caught and killed a lamb,
lit a fire, left the skin
for Eve to make a cloak.

ORDINATION

 

My farewell to you:
the people await your ministry.
You came with a desire to save the world,
to support pilgrims
who walk rough paths of faith,
whose feet, and hearts, are bruised.

Three years of study have changed you.
You leave with less certainty:
concrete images built in youth
have crumbled,
boundary walls
of belief are breeched.
God is less defined,
the agony of philosophers wrestling
with the nature of the universe,
the mystery of consciousness,
questions of the soul -  
suffering –
is now yours as well.

 Are you still believers,
or is the word ‘agnostic’
a better fit?

 This experience is common.
The mystery of what we touch
and taste and study
penetrates and widens every crack.

For that is how Truth operates –
the Spirit, the caress
and embrace of Sophia –
the feminine wisdom of God –
will give you strength.

SONG OF THE STIMULUS PACKAGE

 

What did you do with your stimmy*?

Didn’t waste it, I hope, on the nags.

Did you give it to naughty young Jimmy?

In which case it went up in fags.

 

Thank God for the Covid that shook

the tight fists deep in the coffers

showering dollars that made us all look

like voters grabbing their offers.

 

Am I my brother’s job keeper?

No way – I couldn’t care less:

He’s an unemployed non-job sleeper,

so I’ll grab his allowance for Bess.

 

Nice for once to have enough cash

to buy steak and chips – quite a change.

Won’t splurge on anything rash

‘cept bacon and eggs –  free-range.

 

I s’pose one day it will go

and heave us back in the poo.

But stimmy was quite a good show.

Here’s to it – ‘n Covid ‘n you!

*stimmy is American slang for the stimulus payments made to individuals during Covid.

DIGITAL CODE

 

Our group of elders was eating salad.

I’d dropped tomato on the floor:

slowly, I bent to pick it up.

 

I was lost underwater,

dizzy, not in a forest of kelp,

but of feet and legs.

 

My friend opposite wore open sandals

so I had a close-up of his toes –

mature, damaged goods.

 

What stories were encoded in each,

of hikes, steep climbs, balls kicked,

caresses of a lover?

 

History locked beneath thickened nails,

inside calluses, beside bent bones; his mind

had begun to follow the same trend.

 

One day gene science and IT may let us read

the code of history in each toe.

But would we really wish to know?

WE NEED A POEM TO INSPIRE US

 

in this age of spikey virus.

Seated on this old veranda

poetic thoughts? They tend to wander.

So, we must settle on a theme –

a nasty virucidal scheme.

Ode, pantoum, or toxic sonnet,

something hot under the bonnet?

 

We need some really heavy verse

to shake and shock this evil curse,

to liberate us from its grip

before it gives us all the pip.

 

We need a poem like ivermectin,

so, while you’re busily selectin’

what to put in Christmas stocking,

write a rhyme that’s truly shocking

 

to Omicron, that’s floating free –

deprive it of its liberty.

A poetic mask, N95,

to keep us safe and well, alive.

 

Please use your mouse to good effect,

write a poem that will deflect

the virus’s unpleasant spike,

lines that say how you dislike

 

its attack on every nation,

its tendency for bad mutation.

Do not wait, do not delay:

kill this thing ‘fore Boxing Day!

ONCE UPON A TIME

 

A crowd of witnesses –

confetti of banal pleasantries.

He was visiting

to receive another medal,

gifting its donor

a share in his honour.

 

He smiled, listened –

years of house arrest is good training –

waiting for the ceremony to finish.

 

Mandela was a king of myth,

a magician, he could make wrong right.

But mid-morning

his gait, his deafness,

his sheer oldness, left no doubt

that his sun would soon set.

His Holiness arrived in a motorcade

at Westmead Hospital, bodyguards,

a beneficent smile, sandals,

draped in saffron and red,

clutching abundant silk scarves

as gifts.

 

The staff assembled in hundreds.

‘What can we do’, one member asked,

‘about Indigenous health’?

Silent –  he hesitated and replied,

‘Education!  Education! Education!’

 

‘Should a surgeon operate,’ another wondered,

‘on a person who abused their health,

smoked, ate too much, boozed?’

He paused again then said, ‘I don’t know!

You’ll need to work that out!’

 

He held my hand –

warm, soft-skinned and firm –

back to his car,

I was excited –

like an adolescent lover –

but aware that we would

never meet again.

SYNOPSIS

 

The weather was unsettled yesterday –

clouds massed as troops for battle.

Today, I watched the sunrise 100 kms east,

a narrow horizontal wound,

slashed in the flank

of the black stallion

that filled the sky.

 

Traffic grinds to a crawl,

and flash floods isolate

the poorer neighbourhoods.

The weatherman warned us

with time-lapse radar.

 

His messages were brief.

Did Fate’s finger

write in those synoptic isobars

of what’s to come?

HARRY

 

If you tell me that curiosity killed the cat, I say only the cat died nobly - Arnold Edinborough

‘Harry’s dead,’ she said.

Her words by phone pierced me:

shards of glass.

I’d gone for milk and bread:

I paid, left the store, a robot.

 

Harry was wrapped

in a baby rug

on the lounge,

still warm, flaccid,

eyes wide open.

 

He was adventurous, curious, unrestrained:

it was unreasonable to say, ‘keep him in-doors’.

He had no sense of danger

and that fine morning when the car hit him

he would not have known.

 

A passing couple with a baby in a pram

found him on the road, moved him to a safe place,

not knowing if he was alive or dead.

They phoned Kathy

whose name and number were on his tag.

 

Two years we had him.

Possessed of a perennial kitten’s spirit

he would bring lizards, or bits of them,

to play with in our kitchen.

He’d killed a rosella,

 

He would chew books.

He severed a critical wire

in my hearing aid one night

and brought the parts

to us in bed.

 

He came as a kitten soon after I retired –

he symbolised renewal and new life.

 

Now that he has gone

we are left locked down,

searching for other emblems of youth.

 

LOW TIDE ON WINGAERSHEEK BEACH

 

Borne on the tides, tossed,

we land on foreign rocks,

cling, limpets powered by the fear

that we might slip and slide

when the next heavy wave breaks.

 

Across a chasm

there’s another land, clad in green,

where we might settle,

but the border’s dark and deep.

There's no guarantee

that if we relaxed our grip,

put faith in the sea,

the waves would take us there.

 

But we can’t stay here forever:

we must calculate and take the risk.

 

Some of us might make it.

UNDERSTUDYING DAD

 

Today I am my father,

How this happened

is a secret, but I did it.

 

 …………………………….

 

So here I am in hospital.

I have myeloma.

My wife, who has been crazy on and off

for decades, is at home, but Maisie has come

with flowers and reassuring chat.

 

I’ve taught Maths for years, increasingly Applied –

Mechanics it was called – because theory, like my faith,

had dried out –  seaweed on the shore

that left me wondering as the tide ebbed

what if anything it meant.

 

Maisie is a comfort.

I like her cheer and warmth.

So much chill about insanity at home

and contagious.  I often feel

I, too, am going mad.

 

…………………………………

 

This incarnation is too distressing.

I can only take it in bits.

I think I’ll quit.

LINKAGE

 

A wedding and a graduation –

He dressed in finery for both

to mark his pledges

to a woman and vocation.

 

He lacked two little things at first:

his shirt had cuffs:

that was a shock,

causing a flurried search

and a cry for help.

 

Among the smorgasbord of formal fiddlery

in my bottom drawer, I spied

two cufflinks, made by my Dad

during his lapidary phase –

inexpensive gemstones

glued to brassy stalks.

 

James thought them perfect,

seized and hastily fitted, but in so doing

tradition was not overlooked –

“These are great links to my family history,”

he smiled.

 

O CANADA

 

Winter, and the maple leaves are brown,

toasted wafers,

they have sacrificed

green and water

to their trees of origin. 

 

A few soft ones

with delicate skins

reveal old arteries and veins,

quiet traces

of residual hue.

 

Others have thick skins,

hiding histories and old skeletons.

Denying their reality they hope

they may be raised

in a glorious resurrection.

 

But that’s not how the game is played.

New life is coming:

new leaves,

with the syrup of spring –

not theirs, or mine.

SILENT WITNESS

 

‘Working at home’

One wonders

how sharp is his intellect

in a dressing gown?

How clear are his thoughts

when colleagues connect

just by Skype or Zoom?

Missing the dimension of touch,

the spark of random conversation,

only cognition remains to play in black and white

on the screen of his mind.

 

The plant on his desk

Is dead.  Before he left

for weeks in lockdown

he was urged, ‘Remember

to reach out to your friends.’

He didn’t, but It did, flayling,

as it drowned in conditioned air,

an octopus on dry land,

but the Samaritans

were also working at home

and none passed by.

 

KIN

 

Granny’s basket of wools –

pink, blue and green,

orange. Each ball

a strand of DNA

from which a jumper grew –

enduring emblems, reminders,

though garments now outgrown,

of how intricate the threads

and warm the knit of kin.

 

 

CLOSING TIME

 

Her photos of generations loved,

posted beside the window,

small box of rings and jewel things,

faded silk flowers,

 soft furnishings,

phone, novels.

 Crucifix,

Bible.

 

All packed.

 

It’s a wonder

her bed’s

not gone.

 

Now I look, sound,

even think like her.  

When will it be my turn?

What’s in between –

sunshine, rain –  

before my landfall?

 

ON THE EDGE

 

Covid means we poets meet late each Wednesday afternoon

on this veranda of the Writers’ Centre,

this building once an asylum for those fleeing mental illness.

 

As the day departs, spirits of long-ago patients

move quietly among the trees,

free from the fear of death-eaters

and the grip of taunting hallucinations.

 

I see a prayer tree – perhaps

once used by Celtic patients to post their clouthies.

signalling their yearning to be delivered from evil,

their desire to be well again – and loved.

 

Before the sun completely sets,

we shall hang our ribbons, and seek relief

from ‘the infected winter of our condition.’

CIRCLE OF FIRE

 

It’s not that I didn’t know the danger

but I drove on anyway through the dark,

torrents pissing down.

It’ll only get worse, I thought,

and I needed to get home,

so, I gunned the engine.

 

I’d reached where the road takes a turn

just before Fred’s farm

and suddenly my truck was floating,

well, sinking actually, water rising 

through the cabin floor,

so much water that the electricals all failed.

 

Scared shitless.  I couldn’t get out:

water was lapping my waist

and would soon be at my chin.

My satellite phone still worked – a miracle

and Fred answered – another miracle.

“I’m on my way,” he said.

 

I had no idea what he would do.

He’d brought a semi-automatic, of all things.

I wondered if he was going to finish me off!

“Mind out!” he urged.  He shot through the roof –

a circle of fire – like opening

a can of beans with a screwdriver.

 

I crawled out, weeping, and shaking.

“You’re a bloody stupid bugger!” he said.

 

“Yeah,” I breathed, “and a lucky one, too!”

 

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.