Mimesis

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Driving the heat wave afternoon
Shimmering highway false lake
The pitiless sun fades the paddocks
Cows stand in the Iron Creek,
Like grandparents at the beach.

Distorting angles and images
Upside down
And it is up to
The viewer
Observer
Car driver
To make sense...

Poppies

Poppies... Poppies.
Poppies will put them to sleep.
Sleeeeep. Now they'll sleeeeep!

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Three days of rain, off and on, rain
Ulster exploding green bloom rain
Tank filling shower easing rain.
Driving the windy scenic road
Hand free driving, half joint lighting
Winding bogged culvert verge puddle.

Poppied rows roll up over hill
Waiting the man card in my hand.
I dream as I in the wet wait
Dreaming naked dear heart running
Wild dog free the rolling poppy.

And we arm in arm bed tumble
Licking nuzzling sticky warm
Gummy opium sweet dreaming
Sunlight warm belly legs arms heart.

Sweet dreams a raft the rolling sea
Entangled embraced we sound snore.

Homer Vomiting

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So we have seen squalls all day, in between moments of bright sunshine. I took some time off from the family to read a few paragraphs of Charon by Lucian. When I got to this passage a wild storm rose up. Hail banging on the roof, the windows shaking and rattling with the wind and rain. It was quite a tempest. An example of a recursive incantation? A Homeric recital that caused a storm in Dodges Ferry.

First a little background; Charon has come to Earth to see what it is that makes the shades weep so, when on his ferry. He comes across Hermes and Hermes agrees to show him about. But Charon can not see very well in the bright sunlight (he lives in Hades after all.) Hermes chants some lines of Homer over Charon and he can see! Marvellous he exclaims! Shall I tell you what I know of Homer? How do you, Hermes asks, now of Homer. Charon is insulted and says:

For I was ferrying his shade across the river,
He would not stop reciting - I listened
And I remembered. Even when a storm
That was not trivial overtook us.
When he began his chanting
Not everyone thought his song
To be of good omen for the journey.
He sang of Poseidon gathering the clouds
And troubling the waves. Like when
The cook uses a spoon to stir soup,
So did Poseidon's trident trouble the sea
Great gales he roused and much else besides.
Foaming the seas with his poetic words.
And for a moment I thought our ship
Would be overturned. Then the poet
Grew sea-sick and vomited up his
Recitations. All about was Scylla,
Charybdis, and Cyclops, and many more.
It was not hard for me to gobble up
Some lines from out of the mess.

Magic words that bring on the storm!

Bush Fire

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The local area was ravaged with bush fires, we had no damage, bar having to evacuate and the little girl having nightmares for the next few weeks. sadly several friends and acquaintances lost property. Today is another day of total fire bans. This poem is a sort of cousin to this one. This is the third time I have been caught up in bush fires, lucky nothing bad has ever happened to us personally.

The murdering melting sun
Ezra neoplatonic wise
Pounds relentless
Pure fire of the sun
Removes moisture
And water is best
While gold glitters
A fire in the night

And the grass turns brown
Shatters and turns to shards
And dust crush crunching underneath

A tree smouldering root system
A dome of heat extending
Across the country
Unprecedented in scale

Staging area paddock helicopter
Fixed wing asset spotter plane

Plumes of smoke rising
The breezes swirling now this way
Now that way - desiccating wind
Property owner anxiety
Breeding dog howling wind

Smoke rises and smudges
The horizon the colour
Of chillers water cups
A melon of all colours
Smearing into dirty brown

The trucks raining up and down
The streets a steady stream
Of cars retreating
And Vietnam childhood reporting
Loud rabbit thumping rotors

The winter rains fail
The spring rains falter
And the hills turn brown

A tan child running fun legs
Brown hills crackle
And break apart the fifth
Day wicket after four hard
Fought days of balls hitting
And cleats digging
Brown dirty tub water
A memory day of dodging holes
Sniffing for treasure

Helicopters holding river heavy
Buckets fly overheard head
Fixed wing spotter planes

Like fumaroles on the volcanic
Etna flank hills the smoke rises
Mingles with the eucalypt oils
Of the dried out hills
Of treachery and clouds
Of plumes of smoke that rash rise
Toxic rash into the heavens
Of the upper air solid
And the light of sun falls
Solid rays and lines onto
The landscape dry and dangerous

Next day all was smoke
In the morning even the ocean
Was obscured muffled sounds
Of restless waves shattering
The cold wet sand

We high tailed it out of town
Packed the kids the dog
The tent and sleeping bags
The children into the van
Drove past the lines of smoke
And fire trucks of flashing lights
And action and motion

Behind the night ridge line
Dresden glow of fire storm
Brown private hills catch fire
And I watch from my balcony
The roaring the jumping the leaping
Laughing like a thing alive
Alove fires expand and grow
Blanketing two low hills

And the feeble eerie
Gallows of wan Monet
Noon tide paleness sunlight
Through the endless smoke

Sand the waves are dirty
Witch ash and half consumed
Leaves of gum trees
And the ashes are thrown
Upon the fiercest Sirens
Into the height of the sky
And all night they drift
And drop back down the earth
Out from the sea washing
Up unloved upon the cold
Wet sand full of life.


The pic was taken on the beach, by me a few hours before we left the area. 

Rock Pools

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Hair heavy with sand and salt.

The swirling random patterns of foam
Leave strange shadows in the water...

As the shadow of the swimmer
Falls upon the sand and shimmers
The refracted fractures of sunlight
Upon the lumpy uneven sand,
So too does the prehistoric
Ray move a shadow across the sand
Graceful across the undulating
Echoed slowly becoming rock waves.

The flat grey sky falls upon the flat
Grey ocean, the flat bright blue
Sky falls across the blue vivid sea.

On the sand a small broken fleck
Of a scrape of purple inside
Mother of pearl mussel shell
Catches my eye, catches the sun.

More stars in the heavens than grains of sand.

In the rock pools starfish and urchins,
The strange marking of the snail glyphs.
The gentle flowing of the tide
And a torn jellyfish hangs the
Water column and waltzes back and forth
The tidal flow.