The Current Climate

Weeks of rain,

frequent storms;

humid some days, 

others cool. When 

will summer happen?

We tread warily,

most of us masked

even in the street.

Sanitise, check in/out,

keep your distance.

Best friends chat

on facebook, Messenger,

email, SMS text –

jokes and pictures

instead of actual hugs.

Somewhere else

they’re having heatwaves.

Everywhere else

they’re having COVID.

The whole world complains.

But the islands of Tonga 

have no COVID – only

a volcano and a tsunami! 

Infected rescuers turn back. 

There’s enough trouble.

In a pause between showers

I watch a butterfly, just one, 

dipping and rising –

black-and-white against 

yellow blooms and red.

Photo:  Arjun M J at Unsplash..

A gogyoshi sequence written in response to Friday Writings #11 at Poets and Storytellers United. We were invited to be inspired by the phrase, 'feast or famine'. There's a lot of that about! (Both extremes.) I've written from an Australian perspective, where it is officially summer. Different parts of the country are experiencing different weathers – and then there's Omicron. As for our South Pacific neighbours.... I don't think anyone's having the summer they'd like.

Short Words for the Pandemic

Short Words for the Pandemic

Only yesterday I remarked,
‘I don’t know anyone
who’s had COVID.’ Now I do.
Sweet, bright soul went to sleep
last night and never woke.

23/10/2020

living alone

seven years widowed –

what iso stress? *

*********

law: mask not scarf –

ear loops keep ripping out

my hearing aids

*********

 

first COVID death

of someone I knew –

it becomes real

25/10/2020

trick or treat –

wash the candy

don’t breathe in

*********

trick or treat –

one at a time please

to the door

28/10/2020

* In Australia 'iso' has become a common abbreviation for the pandemic-induced isolation – which reputedly causes people all sorts of stress.

Linking to Writers' Pantry #46 at Poets and Storytellers United, where Rommy is playing catch-up. So I'm catching you up with the last of my October poems here.

Hello Earth #16

Hello Earth

Here I am, watching dusk descend. My friend has driven away on the winding road to Tunstable Falls. It’s well dark now by 5pm, so he didn’t linger, even though we live in different States and haven’t seen each other for months. Now, with lockdown slightly lifted, he could travel here (by car); we can meet. Tea and cake on opposite sides of the table. No hugs. (Any other time, I’d have said, ‘Come stay with me!')

Earth, he tells me he enjoys where he's staying, close to you, listening to the same birds he remembers from forty-odd years ago, their unique calls still filling the rainforest. Now he’s a much-travelled city-dweller, but being back with these trees and birds feels like home. (So I’m OK with not saying, ‘Come stay with me!’) 

Leaning in, I listen to tales of other countries. I show him my journeyings in cyberspace. This year he cannot go to Europe or Africa or the Middle East. But he’s glad he got home in time after the last journey, before lockdown. This year I live more than ever online, all the poetry events now happening there.  (And this year I don’t tell my friend, ‘Come stay with me!’)

Listing gratitudes: When all else fails, there’s poetry. My friend is a poet. He's a little sad; he wants to visit another poet friend in Queensland. That man is 86 and sounding frail. The border into Queensland is still closed. It probably won’t be open before he heads home. I’m grateful he got to spend an afternoon with me. I’m grateful I’m this side of the border. I’m grateful he came to visit and, for a few hours, could stay with me.

Offering these reflections, I feel they're little enough. But humans have a need, it seems, for personal interactions with each other. When all else fails, we’ll go through a screen. But it’s preferable to breathe the same air (no matter if dangerous) or smile across a room instead of across the miles. I step outside, listen to the birds, inhale the scent of the trees. Dear Earth, when all else fails, I stay with you. Please stay with me!


A 369-word 'slice of life' for  Weekly Scribblings #24: When All Else Fails… at Poets and Storytellers United.

Bonding with a Stranger

Bonding with a Stranger

I waited until the young woman delivering my groceries was back at the bottom of my front steps, a safe distance away, before opening my door to call out a thank you. 

‘It’s a great help,’ I said. Telling me she was glad, she looked up with a smile, then surprised me by bringing her hands together and bowing her head as she said,

‘Merry meet.’ 

Taken aback, I stammered out the same. She smiled more widely.

‘Happy Halloween!’ (which it was, in this Hemisphere, and even the exact rather than the official date). ‘Blessed be.’

I returned the greeting more confidently this time, but was still puzzled.

‘So how do you know this about me?’

‘You’re wearing the pentacle.’ With an even broader grin: ‘You can’t hide from your people.’ 

‘Oh of course,’ I said, my hand going to my throat.

I wear it all the time, even in bed, where I shorten the adjustable cord so it can’t get tangled while I sleep. The delivery was early, I was still in my pyjamas, which revealed the silver pendant at my neck – so much part of me I forget it’s there; and not tucked under a t-shirt, hidden, as it sometimes is. 

‘I’m very glad to meet my people,’ I said, smiling back.

She left with a cheery wave.

‘See you next time.’

‘I hope so.’

a greeting

eases isolation

we connect

Pentacle: a 5-pointed star (pentagram) within a circle; often worn by Pagans. Frequently used to represent the element of Earth, it can also be seen to represent all the elements.

I'm sharing this piece, a couple of months after the event, with Writers' Pantry #27: We're Halfway There! at Poets and Storytellers United.

Romance Through COVID-19

Romance Through COVID-19

Now I can only dream of you.

Kisses are not allowed. 

We can’t even be within 

touching distance. This 

may go on for months. Alone, 

isolated, I drift in dream-space.

We whirl away down empty streets,

receding rapidly further from each other.

Then I turn a corner and find myself 

face to face with you again, up close.

Our masks become roses; our lips meet

softly; we refrain from breathing....














 



Written for Weekly Scribblings #18: Art (and turmoil, it seems) Begets Art at Poets and Storytellers United, where we are invited to respond to pandemic-inspired street art.

Reminiscing

Reminiscing
For Chris Mansell

I listen to my old friend,

whose book launch was cancelled

because of The Virus,

reading her poetry online.

Her voice sounds so young,

I think, and remember 

the many times in the past 

when I heard that young voice 

reading from stages – 

and sessions sitting around 

on living room floors, six of us,

in Melbourne or Sydney, or 

Adelaide at the Festival once, 

when that was the only Festival.

All those couples broken up later,

two husbands now dead, and

the third woman disappeared

somewhere in Canberra 

into a life more private ...

and still we are making poems

and putting them in books,

and reading them aloud, just as if

a poet really was a thing to be …

along our long lifetimes.


For the reading referred to, see (and listen) here.

This is truth rather than fact – though there's a lot of fact too. There are minor inaccuracies, in that I've collapsed some details together in poetic licence.

For the record (if any historians are interested, lol):

Chris and I were never actually at the same Adelaide Festival, but others of that group of friends were there together.

 The original three couples were Rosemary and Bill Nissen of Melbourne, Susan Hampton and Andrew McDonald, Chris Mansell and Dane Thwaites, all living in Sydney then – five poets, and a supporter (Bill) so committed that he later served a year as National Secretary of the Poets Union of Australia. I never actually met Dane in person (due to his work schedule if I remember rightly) though he was included, albeit at one remove, in our discussions about poetry, publishing, and Union business. 

I also never met Chris's late husband, though heard a lot about him from the time their relationship began. She points out that she and I actually have three dead husbands between us; but my last husband, Andrew Wade, came into my life a very long time after these events, so didn't seem to belong in this poem.

By 'a life more private' I don't mean to suggest that Susan is not still creating and publishing poetry too. The closest friendships in that early period were between we three women (and Bill, to whom I was then pretty much joined at the hip) and the final lines of the poem can be taken to include her. 

The Great Silence

The Great Silence

This street of ageing neighbours 

is empty at the best of times. However –

The supermarket delivers (I order

online) the pharmacy too; my doctor 
is available to consult by phone.

The TV news keeps me abreast
of events; Netflix entertains me.

Friends text, or video chat;

poetry readings happen on Zoom;

the family communes by Facetime.

Altogether my life is little changed.

Until the 5G towers go down! 

Some people are glad, but for me

high risk, isolated, living alone …

now I am truly on my own.


No it's not true; they didn't go down. But for Day 30 of April 2020 at 'imaginary garden with real toads' we are are asked to imagine being out of communication with the rest of humanity. In pandemic lockdown, it's not hard to imagine just one more thing that could bring it about. (The poem is supposed to be the person's last words to the world. Given my scenario, perhaps these would have been written in a journal.)

The Moment of Change

The Moment of Change

‘The moment of change is the only poem’ — Adrienne Rich

But how do you pick the moment of change? 

Was it when the animal got infected?

When someone ate the infected animal?

When a cough left droplets to infect others?

When the doctor’s warning was ignored?

When travellers took the virus around the world?

When deaths climbed rapidly to thousands? 

When we all went into lockdown? When economies 

faltered: jobs, businesses, homes, incomes lost?

Or was it long ago, when we created planes? Boats?

Or earlier, when we started killing and eating animals?

Well, we always did that — so that puts 

the moment of change at the very, very beginning.

And perhaps that's true. Is change not, in fact,
a moment, but a continuum, a line, a progression? 

Not the only poem, but, as someone else said,

the only constant? And if so, does that make

the whole of history one long, ever-fluctuating poem?

It may be so. Or was the real moment of real change

after we stopped clogging the streets? Did it happen

when the first wallabies ventured into Australian towns,

or dolphins up the Venetian canals? When the world 

largely went quiet, and the creatures, hearing

that lack of mechanical roar and whine and clatter,

collectively waited, then dared hope? Was it 
the first instant one animal looked up — or a bird down — 

paused, and took a new, full, uncluttered breath?

Or is even that too soon to count? How shall we

truly be renewed? It’s only change if it lasts.

So can we, shall we program change —

not by default this time, but deliberately? What

would it take to make this strange new world

lasting? How can we catch it, hold it, stretch

this moment into the new future? Will we find 

the courage? Can those who govern us be so bold?

God, may I witness that moment, write that poem! 

Written in response to Reboot, Rewind, Recycle, Rebirth, Day 26 of April 2020 at 'imaginary garden with real toads'.

Folly in the Time of Coronavirus

Folly in the Time of Coronavirus

It’s more than a month since I last went out. (I’m considered high risk.) I realised my podiatrist, whom I see for medical reasons, might close. I phoned. Yes they would, the following week, but could fit me in today. I arrived masked and gloved. So were the staff. They had a chair outside for me so I didn’t have to sit near another client in the tiny waiting-room.

Afterwards, needing a few supplies, I ducked into a supermarket – not the big, busy one but the little old place on Main Street. It was late afternoon, few people in there, some others masked too. We all kept distance.

In the fruit section, I pulled one of those flimsy plastic bags off a roll, for my bananas. But my gloves were cotton (all I had); I couldn’t prise the bag open.

‘Oh well,’ I thought, ‘I’m going straight home. I’ll have a good wash,’ and took off one glove.

But you know how sticky those damn bags are. It still wouldn’t open. Impatient, from habit, I licked my fingers – shifting the mask just a moment – and tried again. Yes! It never fails.

Then everything went still. Oh. My. God. I LICKED MY FINGERS!!! 

Nothing to be done just then. Don’t react, don’t draw attention. Glove back on, finish shopping, get out quick, get home. Scour hands. Rinse mouth with hot, salty water (well I didn’t have Listerine). Pray.

No, I didn’t get sick. It’s been over four weeks. Whew!

So, so easy to slip from a vigilance we’ve never had to learn before.

I get deliveries now. I haven’t been out since.


Packages.
Collect from doorstep.
Wash outsides.
Wait three hours. Unpack.
Wash hands while singing.


Written (simultaneously) for Weekly Scribblings #15: Ink COVID-19 at 'Poets and Storytellers United' and April 2020 Day 15: Folly at 'imaginary garden with real toads'. (This is more about a moment of folly than the major construction the toads were after – but it could have had major repercussions even so.)

Note: I guess everyone knows that singing 'Happy Birthday' twice takes 20 seconds – the recommended minimum time for hand washing?