in the street of the sky night walks scattering poems

in the street of the sky night walks scattering poems

(e.e. cummings)

in our cities and towns, we do not see

the vast landscape of the sky:

street after street is full

of the tiny false lights of earth –

the electric radiance makes a haze

sky-obscuring, sky-dimming, sky-shrinking;

night in its glory appears only as a street – and who

walks in that street? it looks badly-lit, a mere 

scattering of pin-prick stars insufficient to light

poems, lovers or the sky itself ...

                           **********

in the wild places, though (some do remain)

the expanse of sky, fully revealed, is nothing like any

street; it is an ocean, and we sail anywhere in the ship

of waking dreams, of eye-rapture, of endless delight; there

the stars are myriad, countless, bright,  

sky-filling, sky-spilling, sky-illuminating, sky-extending –

night is an opening into the whole universe, where the mind

walks in amazement, in a joy that stretches thought and confounds sight,

scattering, as the fortunate have discovered,

poems of unfathomable dark – poems of multiplying light

Written for the prompt, at the edge of starry night, for 'imaginary garden with real toads', where our frame of reference is the last line of an e.e. cummings poem, which has become the title of this one and also the first words of my lines, making a double word-acrostic.

Totems / Gifts

Totems / Gifts

Owl is my mother, Serpent my father,

both are my spirit protectors,

Owl at my left side, Snake at my right.

I was led to this knowledge years ago,

and liked it. 'Yes!' I said.

I said yes. I think that's important.

In some cultures owl

is a harbinger of death. To some 

she means wisdom, to some deception.

I'm a Scorpio woman. I speak truth, see far,

cannot easily be deceived, and move

between life and death in a number of ways.

Serpent is wisdom too – a deep, hidden kind –

and healing, and transmutation. Its venom 

has many uses. The shed skins proclaim rebirth.

I am a Scorpio woman; my still waters

run deep. I work as a healer and psychic medium. 

I've lived many lives in one. I am a witch.

One night, soon after I was told, we drove home late 

down a long road through trees. An owl, ghostly white, 

flew in front of us slowly all the way, like a guide.

We arrived home, she glided off. A diamond-backed snake 

lay sinuously along our verandah, dim in the dark

but visible, departing only after we'd seen.

Wise and winged, wise and serpentine,

transformers, agents of healing or death (the greatest healer?)

I know their presence and show this by many tokens.

(The silver earrings I wear, the figures on my altars....)

The wings of owl, the body of serpent later combined

in a new, overseeing totem: dragon.

More and more the outwardly-powerful people

push back and back on the habitats

of owls and serpents, whales and honeybees, and all.

We who love inner power, finding it hard to wield

(or working too mysteriously) against the onslaughts,

resort now to mythic protectors and to the fire they breathe.

May it be a cleansing flame of burning words,

an energy of passion and reason, fire and light

to wake the Angels and stem the flood! 

What we are given, we must use.

I see us banding together around the globe,

a circle of held hands, a circle of firm stands.

(As the Four Horsemen begin their ride.)

Written for Brendan's Weekend Challenge: Totems at 'imaginary garden with real toads'.

No Poem

No Poem

If a poem lovely as sunset

should live within me somewhere,

I'd fetch it out and give to you

to wrap around your hair – 

but your hair is brighter than sunset.

If a poem lovely as a butterfly

should wander through my air,

I'd send it to go and kiss your lips –

but your lips are gentler far 

than a poem or even a butterfly.

So, matchless one, I must come without a poem

to kiss your soft, sweet lips and stroke your shining hair.

Written for the prompt, Micro Poetry ~ A Poem Lovely As at 'imaginary garden with real toads'.

Under the Southern Cross

Under the Southern Cross

My country has four national flags.

Three of them are now official, though only one

is THE Australian flag. It's the one I like least.

Mind you, it does have all the stars

of the Southern Cross – our own

constellation, which I love to see 

travelling gradually across the year 

through the vast, beloved night sky.

But in the top corner the Union Jack

declares we belong to England –

that colonist supreme, that conqueror,

which began our nation (on top of the pre-existing) 

by trampling on justice and the human rights

of convicts and 'natives' both.

Though now we're part of a Commonwealth 

not a fiefdom, the Queen is still our figurehead

Head of State, with real power when it comes 

right down to it: dismissing our elected 

Government (and Gough) in uproar in 1975.

We like you again now, Liz; and William and Harry 

and their lovely wives, and the children. And we're 

a lazy lot. Sooner the beach or the barbie 

than fighting to be a Republic. But give it time.

There's also the Aboriginal flag, created in 1971.

Beautiful! Black skin of the people, 

the good red earth of our desert heart, 

and the immense, golden sun. It's a work of art 

by Harold Thomas, Luritja man. It flew,

radiant and proud, when the First People

gathered to demand, at last, justice and

their human rights – and every time since.
It was first made official in 1995.

The Torres Strait Islands flag depicts

the Islanders surrounded by land and sea. 

Many now live on the mainland. Faith Bandler

of gentle voice and strong spirit, who fought 

in my own lifetime for justice and human rights, 

lived where I live now, and is remembered.

But my flag, in my heart, is white on blue,

symbol of the Eureka Stockade, where its prototype 

was first sewn, first flown, when desperate miners 

fought for justice and human rights. Now it's claimed 

by Republicans, radical groups, and protestors 

on behalf of the environment or of minorities – 
on occasions when some of us choose to march
with shouts and placards, rather than stay
comfortably at the beach or the barbie. 

The original Eureka flag is a tattered remnant
saved in a museum. The design we fly in its memory

we also call The Southern Cross – the flag that tells me 

about myself: I am not so much rebel as revolutionary. 

(Hell, Ned Kelly would have used it if he'd had it! )

When we get the Republic, will they adopt it?

Probably not. Maybe it will stay the outlaw flag, 

just as Waltzing Matilda remains

the outlaw national anthem. Maybe that will do.

But I'd like a National Flag that says: 

We're for justice here, and human rights!

Written for Poets United's Midweek Motif ~ National Flag(s) 

Again

Again

Cannot grasp – 

four days

in tingling, numb happiness!

Now that you 

are with me once more,

can see me,

I find out my heart.

My fingers can be 

very calm in touch,

although deep with feeling.

 A cut-and-paste of two banal little pieces on different topics, which I've now discarded.

Wellngton Street Notebook

Wellington Street Notebook

Mrs Aylett next door took in the sick or wounded animals 

the neighbourhood kids all brought her. (We just knew.)

The house I lived in had a huge back lawn and two willow trees. 

The wooden swing my Dad made me hung from ropes as thick as my arm.

Our end of the street was in Sandhill; the other end was all the way 

down into town. I could walk to school without leaving my street.

The women used to talk to each other over their back fences. 

'Coooo-ee!' they would call, once the men had gone.

Because we were on the hilly end of the street, we could see 

from our high windows all the way down into the town centre.   

When Ludbrooks store burnt down one night, our neighbours woke us up, 

and in houses on the hill we all stood gazing from our back windows

watching the huge orange flames and the smoke against the night sky.

I was cold in my nightie but I stayed up a long time looking.

There was a big patch of uncleared bush just around the corner from my house,

with a shabby old mansion way back through the trees. We thought it was haunted.

My little brother got stuck up a tree one Saturday afternoon. 

His friends had to run and get all the fathers to come and rescue him.

The little boys used to ride their billy carts down the hill. 

They were supposed to stay on the footpath.

There were always people walking past. Not so many had cars back then.

Trams went along our street, all the way from our end into town, clanking. 

The kids in the street used to come and play at our house, in the big back yard, 

because I wasn't allowed to play in the street unsupervised.

I lived in my street until I was 12.

Modelled on the 'Pima Road Notebook' series by Keith Ekiss, in the book of the same name – an exercise in one of my favourite resources: Wingbeats: Exercises and Practice in Poetry, ed. by Scott Wiggerman & David Meischen. 

Photos 63 years later (2014). Little changed, but looking older: Our house; Mrs Aylett's house left of ours; Across the road, with High Street going off uphill. The patch of uncleared bush is gone, filled with houses. The big back yard is gone too. 'They paved Paradise and put up a parking lot' – really. And the tram lines have gone. Today there are buses.

The Passionate Crone

The Passionate Crone

Another poem on blog names for Poetic Bloomings

Once upon a time, when MySpace

was the best place in the world

for meeting other poets, devouring

each other’s luscious words,

Rob Chrysler (he’s dead now)

posted as a joke an ad for auditions

of potential porn stars for a movie.

We poets responded with wicked

written auditions, all hilarious. 

I signed mine ‘The Passionate Crone’ 

(being well past tender years).

It caused universal delight.

Some of them called me that

for a long time after … until

MySpace died (killed off) and most 

migrated to facebook, which has its uses 

but isn’t the same. (Did, er, Someone 

pay the assassins, I wonder now.)

I made me another poetry blog

out in the wide-world blogosphere,

calling it, of course, The Passionate Crone.

Recently it developed a mind of its own,

became intractable. Nothing fixed it.

Was it just getting old and creaky? Am I?  

Might this be a sign from the Universe? (I know 

I’m too old to flaunt it, but can’t I even joke?) 

It’s now an archive. All things end.

My new blog is much more dignified.


I'm also linking this to The Tuesday Platform for 14 August 2018, at 'imaginary garden with real toads'.

Stones for the River

Stones for the River

About the name of my second poetry blog, also written (like the previous poem) for Poetic Bloomings. But as it is not itself a 'small stone' kind of observation, it is posted here rather than there.

‘Small stones’ are observations,

pieces of mindful writing –

looking outside oneself 

for the beautiful, interesting or strange,

as if on a walk you found a stone,

brought it home and polished it.

Satya Robyn called them that

in 2010 when she invented them

and invited the world to play along

every day for a month. The world did,

creating a river of stones. Some of us 

continue. Mine are verse; it’s what I do.

Enheduanna's Daughter

Enheduanna's Daughter

The first author in recorded history,

what she wrote was poetry.

She was High Priestess to the Goddess Inanna

and also to the Moon Goddess, Nanna.

She was an activist and social reformer.

Of course I am – with others – her daughter!

Thought to have been an Akkadian princess,
I see her as the Diana of her age, no less.

On the votive disc we distinguish her

by her frills, her circlet, her braided hair.

The men are plainly dressed and bald.

But all are priests, all walking tall.

A king's daughter, with Privilege in her dress,

she chose a life of constant service.

In my own small way, I too hope to serve.

May my ephemeral verses add to Love –

which keeps the world going round, it's said –

and in some way, by being, to honour those dead

who came before: each determined ancestor

from whom I claim the name of daughter.

Down through countless generations,

through many lost and scattered nations,

women have fallen, women have risen,

but we know to use the gifts we are given.

Enheduanna of the unknown face,

warrior and healer, you carved your space

in a world of challenge and diversity,

as we now make our place. So shall it be.

Written for Poetic Bloomings #210, where we are asked to write why we chose the name of our bog

Also shared with Poets United's Poetry Pantry #424

On the Proposition That Poetry Makes Peace

On the Proposition that Poetry Makes Peace

Poetry – how is it peace? It might, I suppose, be a bridge

over troubled water (as the song goes) – or else a door,

entry point into that desired realm ... also the exit. 

The exit is usually where the entrance was, we are told

rather snidely by some know-all whose name I forget.

Yes, as you see, I am feeling not peaceful but snarky.

Pain, physical pain, as I'm often in, does not allow of much peace.

Emotional pain can be soothed with poetry – reading or writing it.

And is that the function of art, to soothe? Surely, rather, to ignite!

Catharsis? Yes, I'll admit of catharsis. It takes poems of grief,

extreme, anguished, to give me catharsis of my own grief.

Lollies they ain't, for the crying child, to "make it better".

Oceans become suddenly peaceful after great storms.

Vast plains may be still after fierce winds flatten the grasses.

Even so (ignoring metaphor) those are poems I make with my camera.

Joy and love, though – yes! They're the stuff of poetry,

or even the result. And there's a kind of peace after good hard work.

Yes, the peace of completion, feeling fully expressed. Yes.

Walt and Elena at the newly reopened Poetic Bloomings suggested that the written word might bring peace, also love and joy. I wasn't prompt to address the prompt due to a painful writing hand and arm, and after a few days I apologised instead. But while trying, feeling very uninspired, I thought an acrostic might give me entry to the subject matter. Eventually it did, but not quite in the spirit suggested, so it's here not there.

Shared with Poets United's Poetry Pantry #422 – by which time the writing hand and arm are no longer in pain, I'm glad to report.

Dragged Down, Reaching Up

Dragged Down, Reaching Up

Grieving. 

It's a thing I do.

Making me homesick,

maybe clouds or birds ...

All transformations are delicate.

We find exactly what suits us.

The truth is in the heart,

which has its own activity.

Does the knife go in slant?

Is it everywhere the same?

The mountains are individual....

Belonging, of course they know….

It's not as if there are fixed answers.

I am always crying Yes!

Yet I don't recognise when it comes,

arriving immediately. 

I've always looked to the sky,

seeking instruments of balance.

There has been enough time.

We shall mend. And not forget.

Linked to  Poets United's Midweek Motif ~ "a bundle of contradictions"

Yes I know, not as clear and direct as my usual style. I just had some pieces published in a lit. mag. which the editor describes as avant-garde. ('What am I  doing there?' I think – but also very thrilled to be included.) This piece is inspired by, and a response to, some other content. I hope it can stand alone. Written over the last couple of days, it seems to fit this Midweek Motif prompt.