Enigma
If I could paint a peacock
lift a lyrebird’s chant aloft,
chime the moment with a tick-tock
touch your smile with sentence soft,
or rather, strike the mind’s eye
with a powerfully fashioned phrase,
giving meaning sure and certain
to the lines I calmly raise,
strike a rhythm, bet, primeval
that would steal your heart away,
lure a logic lithe and lethal
in the rational light of day,
sing surreally, serendipitously,
forge neologism, tense,
put pay to all hypocrisy
at ignorance’s expense,
capture fairies, cage a demon
smell the instinct of the herds:
there remains the deep enigma ‑
these are nothing more than
words...
The Burning-Off of Marlboro Country
There is an orange heart
in the ti-trees tonight,
smouldering, smarting-sweet
and sickly.
Young trees suffered, mostly.
The ancient, gnarled giants
shrugged of the flames,
as they had always done.
The seasonal ritual
licks along the fence lines
and joins our incendiarist
neighbour’s conflagration.
Tonight my father looks
towards the black and smoking
paddocks with an eerie
fire in his eyes.
I handle my chores distractedly
and eventually frame a question
long on my mind:
Can I help?
My father’s stare does not waver
from the flames. He murmurs
To me in the fiery sunset
‘Your time will come...’
After the Ballet
After the ballet
our steps become
osmotically refined
our toes
do the talking
we are drawn
into repartee
of another age.
Across the harbour
ferries lump into the quay
along the shores
years of work
narrow
into single tourists
pacing the beat.
Above the sails
a sunset happens
in such array
as to hush our chatter
we turn to the skies
with eyes dancing
into starlight.
Voice
I lived my life in innocence
Till, tempted by despair,
I gave my voice to angels
And minions of the air.
I cannot say I suffered
A loss of faculty fair,
Until I searched for you within
And found not hide nor hair.
Upon a good day though
I sense you somewhere there,
And the daemon within me stirs
In its primordial lair.
The cycle must be complete—
This only truth I bear …
I gave my voice to angels
And minions of the air.
Geoffrey Prince
Born at Kempsey in 1952, Geoff is a survivor of mental illness. He has been an
active advocate on behalf of fellow sufferers, and has taught creative writing
to these and more mainstream students. His poetry collections, Cartoons of
Quietness, Anthems of Artspace, The Glass Asylum, and Asides in the Seeking of
Sanity have been published by Papyrus Publishing. He recently moved with his wife Chae to Venus Bay, Victoria, in Bunurong/Kurnai Country with two dogs and a swag of poems.
Seabirds
They embrace the salt sting, short shifts between lift and landing
on wormed, gnarled pier posts, silk softened bridges
to perch on a moments’ sanctuary
so natural for gulls, osprey, evens out the sea eagle's landed dominion
scrag-winged handles washing themselves in the depths
then peg their oiled pin feathers put out to dry …perfect pearl divers
air bubbles cling and rise towards a blissful sun bake
all birds have full bulging bellies after the catch in the swell
sea fisher birds must hunch, digest fishbone, magically becoming one
with seafaring wood floor boarded struts, webbed feet adapt on the spot
feathered adaptations!
sun-soaked dialling calls wind song
kindred circle walking past; and sit watchful …in another place
feeling privileged to be taken back, yes …feeling blessed
to witness a flown circumference
many days of treading ti-treed local beach
very much owned and loved
on my rounded turn, even a top notched pelican joins in…
all are penned and poised to fly
pelicans’ bills sway, posing on surface patched, sand-grit canvas
a vision of father fishing … he too is a pelican
Scrutiny
“Put in words what you can’t say”
soul verse
clamouring through aloneness
wing a godlike will
in birds’ solo cries
or: an aphonic scry
a stellar cross
of all these things
decry earthly tongues
similar to a shiny new penny
written in the aura
sung in starlight symphonies
what can’t be said
remains in an unbidden howling
…windswept whistleblowing haunts
and sighs
Riverland Pelican Country
The
River Murray Mildura
After a day’s commute
driving from an urban fishbowl
market placed, all-consuming and user-pay
a sigh …left behind, settles
sightseeing at an open spate of river
our road travelled, taught bodies rest
…a pelican serenely props
on deep water platforms
emptiness drifts, feathered tensions lurk
an
aiming spear-like beak remains perched
a vital catch in a bird's eyed
point of
view
Strike! prey, simply plucked
in a water
avian’ everyday
cradled and rocked against landing current rifts
Nature's kaleidoscope is a given
…below an early evening sky
magnanimous backdrops focused on, ever-changing
photo framed: hues of pink slides
slip into silhouette, merge with sparkles of light
bounce, reflect on and in the water
as darkness falls all lenses …collapse
mysterious dark creatures’ surface in the fall
sky and starlight mirror mingles a single splashed flip-flop sound
then fish full shadows tempt and stretch in adjusting light
living senses meld, for just short interludes
time pauses, as vigilant ghosting seem cast adrift
the pelican is all
The Middens…A Portal to a Past
Breeding Ground Sanctuary – (A few years walking the Swan Bay National Park
A hermit life
at the time where I had become isolated and cut off from visitors for
weeks
or months at a time. These wild beaches became my trusted companion.
One
heatwave and record temperatures this Nepean bay overheated)
Joggers footsteps mark the contemporary
soles imprint washed sands - partition midden bookshelves
Layer
upon
layer
year
upon
year living skeletons of mounted shell creatures …Kairos time evident in shelled mantels, is an
opportune moment to mentally note my daily walking reveries …not let linear measure speak overhead
…rein in short-lived thought waves
on daily walks:
a bony mineral lineage of solid material, ageless, jammed into particle
sand-grit walls
woven in cosmos-threaded fabric
disappears on timeless tides, only rebuilt in tandem …decanting shifts
great-elder eucalypts, their inner ancient growth rings,
expose mapped eons of carbon rises …weather patterns
no piece of rare furniture, building, woodchip or carved turnstile
holds the now fragmented extra-real …aromatic grandparent tree’s inner
rings’ flesh
dear midden book:
thankful for these remnants passed …part oyster shell mantels,
flaunt an abundant supp, touch an archaeologist's dreaming,
or lone heady coastal discovery …holding treasure, not lost but paused
there is an embodying, the cellular grows memory
echoes of children, their kin laughing, lulled to sleep, gaze upwards
blanketed by night starry skies
(big supply meant quite a consequentially cradling Dreaming by Mother’s
Country
during bending the elbow passages, on food gathering days)
windblown middens sing of a soul rounds’ presence
befriends a sea wind passing, seashell whispers, whiffs of burning fires
after the catch, companionship replenishes …filling the need for warm fed
bellies
imagining; now, all are sheltered after a cold sea swept day
toward the south shore seabirds still fish …break a once mirrored filmy
sheen
warm surface water grows teaming guppies …an algae green watery garden …its life
sideways, crabs adjust their day
not many ventured these living salt lakes, only by lone fisherman
leaving a spasmodic trail of beer cans, faded packets and tattered cellophane …those
annoying empty bags of bait, net and butts
two-legged tourism leaves no song in telling of the round rhyme
carefully traced in Fibonacci cycles … ‘jump back’ melodies’ subtle
tones,
reassuring sighs return a timeless story …listening to departing truths
nature’s climate change consonance is a tall order, remaining silenced in empty-sheeted
plays, exchanges highly priced, all invested in purist games …competing, insist on
Machiavellian themes or plots
earthly and cosmic forces
the tides
the winds
the
sun
the rain, the elements, wholehearted, dealing hands warn of change
beach dwellers recycle their bike tracks:
re-walking the middens sites …physical guidance giving extra knowing in this
sea sanctuary
for now, are seen by the settler dismembered record…white and brittle shell-shocked ghosts’
pitch, chorded and howling …whilst dead fish die in brine, in far too hot bays …gasp, quake
on this one morning the north winds swept
life away
resignation:
how often do we happen upon this?
References: to Kairos Time - Greek Mythology
- the personification of opportunity or the right moment
- Classical Greek Art - bald at the back and long at the front.
First Australians’ Dreamtime
Swan Song
At
first when a poem is cast
like a duck paddling upstream
in the fresh open air
the
water is tannin brown
swilling around occasional
bubbles rise up from a mud and weedy bottom bed
seeking
worded clemency clarity
thoughts like silken threads often gather in moonlit tangles
dancing
mirrors guide a two-step pen
relaxes and untangles a free gait glides when the inner is a partner
Reason’s
sting
approaching Paradise meant
to be lost
then found?
Chae Paterson
Born in Melbourne in 1952, Chae, after a difficult childhood, became a mature
age student and sole parent in her thirties, achieving a BA Hons. But
discontinuing a later MA due to pressure of circumstances. After a short career
as a singer and performer, Chae turned to poetry after attending numerous
writer’s groups. She recently moved with husband Geoff to Venus Bay, Victoria, in Bunurong/Kurnai Country with two dogs and a swag of poems.
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