My Ink

The first, I chose decades ago: a tiny pink rose, low on my right shoulder-blade. Secret, to be seen only by a lover.

The next I took from the Wiccan Rede: ‘When misfortune is enow (a very old word for enough) wear the blue star on thy brow.’ Therefore not permanent, not indelible – drawn rarely, only when badly needed; removed again whenever it no longer applies.

Recently, I decided on some animal totems: my left-hand guardian the owl, my right-hand guardian the serpent. One of each, on the correct forearm, in fine outline. A reward to myself for getting through all that hospitalisation and surgery, a little over a year ago.

Today I looked at my wrinkly 86-year-old arms, picturing how that surface would spoil the artwork, and thought, ‘No. Too late.’

The pink rose never happened either. (Tattoo parlours got such a bad name for such a long while.) I have no lover now, and no plans to find one.

The blue star happens occasionally, yes – by visualisation and intention, not with actual ink. Not even a blue biro. On my forehead, unable to be fully hidden by my hair, that would be too visible, too weird.

*********

I only need look inside my mind and memory to see my tattoos. I dwell on them. They are beautiful. I love them.

Nocturnal

 

I live in a cul-de-sac at the top of a hill.

At night I hear silence, an occasional dog.

Inside I have non-stop jazz on late.

I leave the passage light on, not to trip over.

All night I hear silence, an occasional dog,

and my black, nocturnally wandering cat.

I leave the passage light on, not to trip over her.

Time stretches out vast in the early hours.

Watching my black, nocturnally wandering cat,

I feel my skin start to breathe, my back straighten.

Time stretches out vast in the early hours.

I must go to bed, I tell myself, but I don’t.

I feel my skin start to breathe, my back straighten

inside the non-stop jazz I have on late.

I must go to bed, I tell myself, but I don’t.

The cul-de-sac is alive, here at the top of the hill.

Inspired by a prompt from Padraig O Tuama at the Poetry Unbound substack. He has some novel instructions for creating a pantoum. (This is an unrhymed pantoum, which is not traditional, but in my reading I notice it's becoming a common variant.) I must have subscribed to this substack at some point – and how glad I am that I did – as this post turned up in my email today.  How could I possibly resist giving his method a try?

At Poets and Storytellers United, Friday Writings #209 asks us to be inspired by the following quote by Arthur Ashe: ‘Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.’  While I didn't write this poem specifically to that prompt, its creation and subject matter exemplify the advice.

As a matter of interest, my original lines in response to O Tuama's prompt questions were:

I am in a cul-de-sac at the top of a hill.

At night I hear silence, an occasional dog.

Inside I have non-stop jazz on late. 

I leave the passage light on, not to trip over

my black, nocturnally wandering cat.

Time stretches out vast in the early hours.

I feel my skin start to breathe, my back straighten. 

I must go to bed, I tell myself, but I don’t.

(Not a bad little poem in itself, as it happens – but I do think the pantoum version is more interesting.)

It Wasn’t Me Who Had the Epiphany

I kept bursting into tears! It was our first visit to Bali – me, Bill, and our two little boys. It was 1974, the tourist boom just beginning. We visitors would collectively alter that Paradise beyond retrieval … but we didn’t know so then. It was still unchanged. A naked family, showering under a roadside run-off, waved unembarrassed as our taxi passed.

the setting sun

falling slowly into

a wide flat sea

‘Island of the Gods’ the tourist books called it. We agreed. Enraptured as I was, why was I constantly bursting into sudden tears? 

We read the histories. Some postulated combined ancestry, Indian and Chinese. Later writers say those influences arose more from trade visitations. We could still find old Chinese coins, with holes in the middle, dropped in the street. I brought home three to use with my I Ching.

Suddenly Bill got it. ‘It’s the Indian in you!’ 

My maternal grandmother was mixed-race Anglo-Indian. (I have to add ‘mixed race.’ There are other definitions of the term, from the time of the Raj: one meaning completely English but living long in India, the other meaning completely Indian but thoroughly adopting British culture.)

He was right. It burst on me as revelation. It wasn’t the people but the artefacts. I was re-experiencing things I’d grown up with, lost along with my childhood. I was eating out of bowls I ate from in my grandparents’ home, I was surrounded by reminiscent ornaments, I was admiring familiar designs on cloth … 

There were connections with Chinese artefacts too. My mother’s family had put in there on the long boat trip from India to Tasmania, and bought some pieces. 

I’ll pass to descendants the carved Indian-silver containers and vases, the polished bamboo bowls with Chinese dragons painted around their outsides.

My Dutch-born husband wanted to visit Indonesia for the soul connection to an ancestor who had lived there and left diaries. I didn’t care. I hadn’t been out of Australia; I was happy to go anywhere. How odd that it was I who fell into connection with my Asian roots (who never got seventies Bali out of my blood for evermore). But …

I never returned 

to the isle of the gods –

vanished

Written for Haibun Monday: Epiphany at dVerse.