Vagabond

[Posting here because I found I needed a place to park this piece, so as to be able to link to it as desired. It's the title poem of my 2005 book, Secret Leopard, published by Alyscamps Press.]

Down near the flat rocks at the pool

the secret leopard sniffs the day.

He tilts his head by the striped bamboo,

calling me: come and play.

When I was seven, and nine, and twelve,

I watched for his furious, bell-shaped head,

but they always dragged me back from the track.

'He is terrible,' they said.

They stuffed my ears with cottonwool,

they tied my hands and feet to the bed,

but still the house shook silkenly

to his broad, electric tread.

That was a long, long time ago.

Now I am grown and free to run

to the white rocks and the dim bamboo

and the velvet hood of the sun.

He has been waiting by the yellow pool,

padding the black leaves patiently,

holding the flame in his narrow eyes,

wild and slow as the sea.

His handsome haunches are molten gold,

his perilous paws flow red through the shade.

You may mew forever from your pitiful bed —

I am deep in the spiky glade.

I will not tell of the spotted jungle

with silver trees that eat the sun.

I will not tell of the tawny trails

where I and the lavish leopard run.

 © Rosemary Nissen 1974

 from Universe Cat, Pariah Press (Melb.) 1985

and in Secret Leopard, Alyscamps Press (Paris) 2005.

First published A Second Australian Poetry Book for Children (Oxford)

Also in Secondary English Book 3, Macmillan.

Remembrance

Remembrance

For my mother

Tasmania was mine, mmm, I loved it.  The many colours, many landscapes, the movement of the seasons.  The deep blue mountains, the bright meandering streams.  Silver and golden streams, water and sunlight.  Sunlight streaming on my wide back lawn, which spread like a meadow.  Shimmering grass and shimmering sky.  Fresh springtime mornings, their frosts diminishing, becoming dew.  Summer full of bees, their peaceful hum.  Me on my own, mooning through summer days, meandering round my meadow, humming too.

Winter mists hiding the valleys, climbing the hills, almost veiling the mountains, draping my  familiar town in mystery, magic.  Then melting gradually, by midday gone, the gleaming town new-minted.

Murky rain, black mud; myself muffled in overcoat, cap and mittens.  Gumboots to mid-calf.  Squelch, squelch, I am the master of all this mud!  Hurrying home to the warm, the welcoming  mother.  Tomato soup beside the fire.  My clothes hugging me warm: soft socks and cosy jumper.  Hugging myself with my happy arms.

The taste of tomato soup and mushy brown bread.  The taste of comfort, home.  The flavour of a warm room, safe from the frosts and marauding storms. Summer tastes were fruit – gooseberries, raspberries, nectarines, damson plums...  The purplest of plums, dark purple, thick with juice.  Messy all over my cheeks, staining my hair, covering my  hands to the wrists.  My rich purple lips, my inky tongue.  Mum amazed, aghast at so much mess.  Oh miraculous messy damson plums!  Welcome back to my memory, dreamtime summer fruit.

My summer stretched to encompass all the autumn.  Mellow harvest moons, huge and golden, mimicked the sun.  The sky smiled, the cosmos smiled on me.

'Come home!' the island calls me now.  'You are my child.  Come home, come back, you are mine.' 


First draft written 1987; final version 1990.
Published in Secret Leopard (Paris, Alyscamps Press 2005) 


An old poem for the new Writers' Pantry #1 at Poets and Storytellers United. It seems particularly fitting, as we now include prose or poetry – and this is a prose-poem.

Although the Pantry isn't prompted, i.e. we can write on any topic, this time its host, Magaly, touched on what constitutes home and I was reminded of this piece about my childhood home. Like the rest of Australia, it's burning, so I recall all the more poignantly what it was to me.