G is for... great expectations

I am having trouble with Tricia's blog - The Miss Rumphius Effect - every time I go there my browser crashes and I have to restart the computer. I can't even leave her a comment to say it is happening (or to let her know about my poetry stretching lol. This one wasn't that good an effort, but I did like my sijo(s)?).

As a result, I am not linking directly to this week's poetry stretch instructions, because I have finally got my computer stable enough to post my poem (I hope)! This week's challenge was to write macaronic verse - a poem that uses one or more languages, usually for comic effect. Here's mine (nowhere near as good as the other offerings she received!) but my brain is not working at its best, for obvious reasons :P

The boys are cranky.
They are sick.
Sniffling, snuffling, sneezing.
I am sick too.
Ich bin krank.
Gezundheit.
God Bless You.
Amen!

You don't want a photo of us in this condition (trust me!) so here is some gorgeous, gentle green instead.


Can you see the little froggy hiding in the centre of the pumpkin leaf? We counted 5 green frogs on the pumpkin vine yesterday :D

It is still too early here for the Poetry Friday roundup. I shall try to locate the host and do the link later.

F is for fantastic fun!

This week's poetry stretch was so much fun - I couldn't stop at just one! Tricia, from The Miss Rumphius Effect, challenged us to write a sijo! This is Korea's answer to the haiku. I'll leave you to check out the rules over at her blog - and even if you don't want to know how to write one, you should read the example she posted by Linda Sue Park - I will never look at a storm in the same way again!

Here is my first one:

-----------------------------
An Amphibian's Nightmare

A tiny frog balances delicately on a blade of grass.
It trembles under his weight as he peers at his own reflection...

He jumps - startled! For a moment, he feared he saw a handsome prince!



-------------------------------

Here is another...

------------------------------

Treasure

Fluffy yellow wattle flowers cluster thickly together,
branches drooping under an avalanche of perfumed pompoms --

a buzzing bandit flees, saddlebags overloaded with gold.

--------------------------------

And another (a true story lol)...

-------------------------------

Lessons in forgiveness

A little boy takes the papers his mother has measured and cut
with careful precision and pours his glass of water over them.

As she starts to yell, he smiles... says "Mummy, thank you for having me!"

--------------------------------

And the last one (for now - I am sure this is a form I will return to! Thanks, Tricia - I love it - though I don't know how successful these will sound to others!) Wombat was playing outside, getting bored with my preoccupation (I was composing the above). He said - "Tell me a story about DIRT, Mummy!" So here it is:

-------------------------------

For thousands of years, this soil
has been forming: from broken trees
and mountains eroding
into tiny particles of dust...

for God, in his wisdom, knew
that little boys need dirt to play in!

--------------------------------

I had my camera ready - this is Wombat's smile when I got to the punchline :D (note the state of his clothes lol)




This week's Poetry Friday is graciously hosted at The Holly and The Ivy. For some reason my internet connection drops out whenever I try to open that page, so I hope I get the chance to put my entry in before it is too late!

Stay on the bus!

The poem and photo for "F" will have to wait for next week. I've been sideswiped by this week's poetry stretch. Tricia challenged us to write a love poem without using any terms of endearment or soppy lovetalk. Yeti and I will have been together for 16 years this March, making tomorrow our fifteenth Valentine's Day together. I still have never written a love poem for him. The time for that poem has come!



First, a few words of explanation. Yeti turned 55 last month, so he is a dyed-in-the-wool original hippy. (At 35, I'm forever destined to be a rainbow-coloured-wannabe LOL.) One of Yeti's heroes is Neal Cassady. He drove Furthur, the Merry Prankster's Magic Bus, and when he wasn't driving, he liked to play throw-and-catch with a sledgehammer. Neal is no stranger to poetry - he is the "secret hero" in Howl! I'm certainly no Ginsberg, but when I started trying to write a non-traditional love poem for Yeti, these were the things my mind revolved around. I was even inspired to buy a poster of Further - as she looks now - for Yeti's anniversary present (see photo below). I asked Zane Kesey (Ken Kesey's son) to write one of his father's quotes on the poster: "People think love is an emotion. Love is good sense."

("Furthur" is the motto of our relationship. For our wedding, we had an owl and pussycat cake, and the name on the pea-green boat was "Furthur". The sign on the back of the original bus read "Caution: Weird load." lol I guess that applies too!)

And now for my poem. I am going to keep it to give to him on our anniversary, partly because I want my present to be a real surprise, and partly so I have time to let it sit and think about whether I want to change anything. I'd love any advice! Please note - the Beat Generation were into experimental creativity in all its forms. This poem is not in reference to any mind-altering substance - except love, of course!

I'm still searching for a title. I'm thinking something with "aura" in it, but I just can't get it... maybe I'm looking in the wrong direction... I'd use 'Furthur', but it's already an acrostic!

Flipping a sledgehammer, working a rhyme,
Using our dreams to keep grasping the real.
Round the free will we go, turning the wheel.
Trip to the metaphor, skip through the time,
Hold onto happiness, stronger than steel -
Under the rust is a rainbow's appeal.
Riding the merry bus: love is sublime.

Pictures by Zane Kesey.

And to finish, something from "my" era that gives me the same peaceful-happy feeling that I mean by "aura" :D



Poetry Friday this week is over at Big A little a. See you there!

E is for ... exciting!

I couldn't seem to do anything with this week's poetry stretch at The Miss Rumphius Effect. My diminishing rhymes refused to cooperate. So, I returned to another difficult poetic form which I have tried and abandoned many times over the past few months - the ballade - and this time, it worked! Yippee! It also gave me a poem about Eucalypts - something I have found very difficult to write about because of this poem, which I have posted for a previous Poetry Friday and which for me, describes the bush so perfectly that any attempt I make always suffers from the comparison. Hmmm... my computer is really playing up tonight, so if I manage to get this posted before Saturday dawns, will you buy me breakfast at Milliways? I guess not - unless I can manage three more impossible things - like catching up with the backlog in Google Reader, answering an email from an old friend, and getting Wombat dressed without tears... somehow I doubt it :)

The Eucalypts

The cocky's perch, the sly goanna's lair,
the hangout where the fruitbats fuss and tease,
a shelter for the shy koala-bear,
the acrobatic possum's high trapeze.
Above the whispered swaying of the breeze
a piercing song the shrill cicada thrums:
the music of the bushland's towering trees.
My heart will always live amongst the gums.

A blue haze rises in the hot sun's glare
as oil exudes from eucalyptus leaves
and shimmers in the overheated air:
a breath of freshness 'midst the city's wheeze;
a cure-all antiseptic for disease;
a favourite of all dinkum aussie mums;
a remedy for sniffle, cough and sneeze.
My heart will always live amongst the gums.

An aromatic scent beyond compare
as blossom-heavy branches seek to please
the lorikeets; a pair of gang-gangs, rare,
return each year for gumnuts, and the bees
with pollen-laden bags and golden knees
are gathering their loot with honeyed hums.
No substitute could compensate for these:
my heart will always live amongst the gums.

Oh royal eucalypts, your majesties
give blessings beyond reckoning or sums.
Though I may travel far across the seas,
my heart will always live amongst the gums.



Our host for Poetry Friday this week is Elaine from Wild Rose Reader.

D is for ... decorative

This week, Tricia from The Miss Rumphius Effect proposed writing a lipogram. Basically, this is a piece of writing "that avoids one or more letters of the alphabet." It is also defined as "a work written within a constraint" (though this definition would apply to most poetic forms, would it not?) As my poetry stre-e-e-e-tch, I decided to write a reverse lipogram, in which every word of the poem had to contain the letter "d".

I liked the result. The lack of connectives made it difficult, but the two-words per line rhythm that emerged seemed to echo the erratic zip-zip-zip flight of the subject. It also challenged me to come up with new descriptions, as most of the words which first came to mind had to be discarded because they were "d-less".

In the end I had a lot more words brainstormed which felt perfect but which I decided not to use - as I added more, the effect started to fade, and it started to feel like just a list of jumbled words. It was difficult to get a balance that felt right and still seemed to carry some meaning. Where and how and even whether to punctuate also took some time and thought. Did I get it right?

Dragonfly

Delicate winged
darter, dipping,
dashing, diving.
Splendid, suspended
unfolding dream.

Diligent endeavour;
dynamic adventure.

Deeper delight
untangled serendipity -
uncomplicated desire;
confident dignity.

Endless gratitude.

The photo can't do justice to the amazing colour of these creatures. This one has an almost lavender shimmer over a silvery sky blue.

Today's Poetry Friday is hosted by Suzanne from Adventures in Daily Living.

C is for... creation

I am so late with posting this that I don't think I can still claim that it is Friday anywhere in the world! What can I say? The babies wouldn't let me blog :P

Better make this quick as there is a nappy to change and breakfast to provide (lol... Yeti always comments when I combine things like that in a sentence - NO, they are consecutive, not concurrent events, and one will not provide the ingredients for the other lol)

Way back on Monday, Tricia from The Miss Rumphius Effect suggested writing an Oulipo for a poetry stretch. This is a snowball Oulipo, in which every line has one letter more than the one before.

In
the
dark
quiet
leaves,
mystery
cocooned:
chrysalis.
Miraculous.

Wombat and I spied this cocoon outside our toilet window last week. We have been watching it anxiously and yesterday we decided to bring it inside out of the extreme heat, so we could watch it hatch. We researched it on the internet, prepared the old fish tank and then as the last step, we cut the branch.

What disappointment to find it empty and dry with a tiny hole in its side! It had been parasitised by a wasp or something of that nature, long before it came to our attention. (Click for the larger picture and the hole is quite visible.) Oh well. I have promised Wombat that we will look out for one of these...

and try again!

Poetry Friday was hosted this week by Laura Salas.

A is for... anno Domini

Today, I start combining Poetry Friday and the A B See photo meme.

I had planned a ballade about ants, but the combination of scorching weather and grumpy children was not conducive to a complicated composition.

Then Rocks in My Dryer hijacked me with a haiku challenge. Free stuff! I had to enter :D Needless to say, I wasn't one of the finalists (or you would have heard me whooping and hollering from wherever in the world you are reading from!)

It seems my New Year's Resolutions are pretty much the same as the other respondents to her challenge - less of me in the physical dimension, more of me in the spiritual dimension and don't forget, be nice to the babies. I started thinking about how far I was already falling below my own expectations in such matters - and we're not even halfway through January yet. The haiku which resulted from this self-examination evolved into a tanka.

New Year's Resolutions

One day at a time.

Relax! Be kind to yourself.

God will see you through.

More of HIM, less of you. The

little ones need loving too.

I obviously couldn't team this poem with a photo of an ant, so instead, here is an ANGEL!

I had a bright idea - photograph the angel with a bunch of agapanthus. I was arranging them on the old exercise trampoline which sits in our yard when Wombat had a bright idea too... let's make the angel dance!

This week's Poetry Friday is hosted by Anastasia at Picture Book of the Day. (Yes, yes, I know. It is already Saturday where I am, but as far as I am concerned, it's never a new day until after I have been to bed! Been burning the midnight oil far too much lately... another resolution in need of a revolution!)

Also, amble over to The Homeschool Post for more A B See photo fun :D

Poetry Friday - Cockatoo AU

It's no longer Friday here, but I've been entertaining a rain-bound Wombat all day, so haven't had a chance to polish the poem or post until now. Luckily, it's still early for the rest of the world!


When I began this week, I thought I was writing a ballade, which mutated into a ballad, and finally ended up, of all things, as an acrostic Franken-sonnet* with a trochaic metre!

Cockatoo AU

Cocky wanna rule the world?
Or, perhaps, the universe?
Cocky shrieks a strident curse!
Keen defiance, crest unfurled,
Armaments in claws, tight-curled.
Treetops dance as troops disperse
Overhead, with aim diverse.
Orbit once, then missiles hurled.
Aggravated damage done.
Undefeated! Triumph won!

[Sulphur-crested Cockatoo (Cacatua galerita) on Scotland Island, near Sydney, New South Wales, Australia taken in June 2004 by Arthur Chapman.]

*Franken-sonnet = it's got the abbaabba pattern of an Italian sonnet, combined with the couplet ending of an English sonnet, but it's missing a quatrain, so really doesn't deserve the name at all! Hopefully it won't hunt me down some dark night and demand retribution for its misshapen form!

This week's Poetry Friday is hosted by Wild Rose Reader. Enjoy!

Poetry Friday - True Blue

I enjoyed last week's Poetry Friday so much, I am back for more! This week I am adding to my series of poems based on photographs of nature. Previously I had been versifying based on photos taken by my dad, but since they are all locked on my old computer and currently unaccessible, I am going to use a photo I took last month in the bush behind our house.

I also was intrigued by last week's Poetry Friday host, Lisa Chellman, who is working her way through Stephen Fry's poetry book The Ode Less Travelled. I don't have access to that book, so I thought I might cheat and shadow her progress a little. Accordingly, here is my attempt at a rondeau.

True Blue

A flash of blue beneath the trees
my full attention guarantees.
A scrap of sky that's fallen there,
a flaunting colour, rich and rare,
amongst the rust-brown leaves, a tease.

A floating mote that skims the breeze
and flits with soft-winged expertise
an irridescent sheen so fair -
a flash of blue.

It's true, I am not hard to please,
just one of nature's devotees,
delighted by a chance to share
this image as a visual prayer
with thankfulness that thrills to seize
a flash of blue.

This week's Poetry Friday roundup is hosted by Mommy's Favourite Children's Books.

Poetry Friday - Thanksgiving

I guess it's been a long time since my last Poetry Friday - but then, Munchkin is now four months old, and it feels like he was born only yesterday.... time sure flies when you're sleep deprived, and Munchkin just loves to feed all night, so please excuse the atrocious grammer of this sentence!

I've not got long to post this before it's no longer Friday here, so I'd better hurry :D

My sister set me a challenge - to write a poem in anapestic tetrametre (the metre used by Dr Seuss.) My effort is nowhere near as entertaining and humorous as the good Doc's (or my sister's poem, for that matter)... but since Thanksgiving is in the air and I've been awaiting the muse to celebrate my sons in poetry... here goes!



Giving thanks

For our long conversations 'bout "God only knows"
And for giggles and gurgles and pink baby toes


For the huggles and snuggles and cuddles we share
For those small, chubby fingers that tangle my hair


For the sweet, sloppy kisses no mother would swap
For those bright shining glances that make my heart stop


For an infant's dependence that wails every need
For that huge milk-drunk grin at the end of a feed


For a toddler's logic and tantrums and tears
And for being the one who can calm all their fears


For their joy in exploring each blossoming skill
For their bravery pushing the bounds of free will


For frustration, impatience and chaos unleashed
As I treasure by contrast rare moments of peace


Make my hands quick to catch them whenever they fall
Make my feet swift to answer whenever they call


Dearest Lord I give thanks for these boys every day
Bless my Wombat and Munchkin, I lovingly pray!

This photo was taken a month ago, so you can see that Munchkin is no lightweight! I'm so scatterbrained lately that Yeti has suggested Munchkin is sucking out my intelligence to fill that big head of his! LOL :D (That might explain the ending of my poem, which though sincere, feels like something of a cop-out...)

Poetry Friday is hosted this week at Under the Covers.

I hear a hungry cry from the bedroom - gotta go. At least the source of Munchkin's new nickname should be obvious by now!!!

Flying Poetry Friday

Lately I feel a lot like the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland - "No time to say hello, goodbye! I'm late, I'm late, I'm late!". I must rush off to get Wombat up from his nap, but first... since this is just a flying visit...

Bird

It was passed from one bird to another,
the whole gift of the day.
The day went from flute to flute,
went dressed in vegetation,
in flights which opened a tunnel
through which the wind would pass
to where birds were breaking open
the dense blue air -
and there, night came in.

[Pablo Neruda]

And another addition to my ongoing project...

Cupped hollow of grass and lichen,
bracken and bark,
breast-pressed.

Fragile curve of shell and spirit,
speckled, mottled,
nestled.

Secret growth of bone and feather,
eggs of the masked
lapwing.

[MW]

Today's Poetry Friday Round-up is at Semicolon.

The cockatoos are calling

Today's Poetry Friday Roundup will be held at Kelly Fineman's Writing and Ruminating.

The wattle is in full-flower, and the sulphur-crested cockatoos gather each morning to enjoy the sweetness of the new buds. They will stay with us right through the cycle, feasting on bugs attracted to the pollen-laden puffballs and then stripping the pods of shiny black seeds. In thier honour, I am offering an excerpt from a Banjo Patterson poem.

White Cockatoos

Then you hear the strident squalling:
"Here's the boss's son,
Through the garden bushes crawling,
Crawling with a gun.
May the shiny cactus bristles
Fill his soul with woe;
May his knees get full of thistles.
Brothers, let us go."

-A.B. (Banjo) Patterson

I have also rewritten my attempt at a poem for the cockatoo photo. It reappears as a villanelle...

In bright treetops white cockatoos screech scorn,
unheeding, scatter debris as we feed.
Our cacophonic chorus shreds the dawn.

We're raucous hostage-takers of the morn
demanding tribute - ripened fruit and seed.
In bright treetops white cockatoos screech scorn.

Is wattle scarce? Then feast on wheat and corn.
Whatever is in season suits our need.
Our cacophonic chorus shreds the dawn.

Get up, and feast! Come rend with beak and horny
claw. The time of plenty's here indeed!
In bright treetops white cockatoos screech scorn.

The spoilers soon will leave our chicks forlorn,
will satisfy with sharpened steal their greed.
Our cacophonic chorus shreds the dawn.

We'll strut and preen on monocultured lawn,
indomitable, the sulphur-crested breed.
In bright treetops white cockatoos screech scorn.
Our cacophonic chorus shreds the dawn.

- MW

Still not happy with it... but it's better than before ;P
As always, reading everyone else's brilliant offerings for Poetry Friday will highlight its shortcomings - it can only improve! I often feel my language is too literal for poetry... and yet I can't stop the urge to write or share it...

Tales from toyland

It's been a while :) First my computer developed a bad case of the hiccups. Once it was up and running limping again, I had to spend every spare minute saving anything I wanted to keep onto CD in case its problem proved terminal. After that, the modem decided that being swapped back and forth between my computer and Yeti's was too much for it, so it took a couple of weeks off as well.

Surprisingly, I actually enjoyed my break from the electrical monstrosity, so correspondence from now on will probably be sporadic. I am no longer getting up at 3am, so there is less time to procrastinate in the mornings - and my routines for getting me and the house tidy take priority. Wombat naptime is likewise generally overbooked in the 'to-do' department.

Poetry Friday is here again, and I am jumping in with a short but punchy piece from Canadian Fantasy Writer, Charles de Lint.

Today's round-up will be held over at The Miss Rumphius Effect.

The Puppet

The puppet thinks:
It's not so much
what they make me do
as their hands inside me.

~Charles de Lint

If you have kids, you have probably heard by now about the Fisher Price toy recall, due to lead paint used in their manufacture. Yeti hunted around and buried deep within Mattel's site, he managed to find a list of the recalled products, with pictures for easy and fast identification. Elmo and Dora the Explorer seem to be the primary culprits, and it is confined to toys made this year, but if you've bought or been given any Fisher Price products since May, it's worth checking against your toybox!

We had an adventure this week - a three hour drive into town to visit a friend - who wasn't home - so we took Wombat to the beach instead.

Windswept, salt sand specked,
plucking snails from a rockpool,
stroking a starfish,
peeking at a purple-clawed
crab in a crevice.

~MW

Poetry is...

My favourite day of the week is here again! Not because the weekend is coming (weekends are pretty much the same as any other day when you don't go out to work or have kids in school). No, Friday is my favourite day of the week because I get to read lots of poetry!

My offering today comes from Carl Sandburg, author of my all-time favourite quote about poetry:

"Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air."

Who Am I?

MY head knocks against the stars.
My feet are on the hilltops.
My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of
universal life.
Down in the sounding foam of primal things I
reach my hands and play with pebbles of
destiny.
...
-- Carl Sandburg

And for my own offering this week - a cinquain.

Cheeky
cockatoo calls,
screeching from the treetops.
Golden crest flashes. Ready for
mischief.

[MW]

Today's Poetry Friday round up is hosted by Mentor Texts and More.

Dreaming

This week's Poetry Friday Round Up is at Chicken Spaghetti. Each week I seem to be very early or very late with my Poetry Friday contributions... it's rather obvious which one I am this week!

First, from Aboriginal poet Oodgeroo Noonuccal - also known as Kath Walker:

Gifts

‘I will bring you love’, said the young lover,
‘A glad light to dance in your dark eye.
Pendants I will bring of the white bone,
And gay parrot feathers to deck your hair.’

But she only shook her head.

‘I will put a child in your arms,’ he said,
‘Will be a great headman, great rain-maker.
I will make remembered songs about you
That all the tribes in all the wandering camps
Will sing forever.’

But she was not impressed.

‘I will bring you the still moonlight on the lagoon,
And steal for you the singing of all the birds;
I will bring the stars of heaven to you,
And put the bright rainbow into your hand.’

‘No’, she said, ‘bring me tree-grubs.

[Oodgeroo Noonuccal, ‘Gifts’, in My People, p. 39]

For more Aboriginal poetry, I recommend this essay by Adam Shoemaker: The Poetry of Politics: Australian Aboriginal Verse.

And for my offering today:

New songlines stretch across an ancient land -
no sacred trails recorded in the stone,
no tales of dreaming written in the sand,
but tight strung wire announcing "this I own!
This property is under my command!"

No more the faithful quester's quiet tread
will trace creation's map in dots and string
bright beads of waterholes on story's thread,
ancestral spirits teaching through their prayer.

A corroboree of breezes left to sing
the ceremonial rules of 'taking care';
to strum the fence wires, humming as they play
for tiny feathers flitting light as air;
to wonder why the elders went away...

[MW]

Truth and Beauty

Today's Poetry Friday round-up can be found at Farm School.

Wombat has a book of patterns, which he likes me to draw for him and which he attempts to copy. He likes dots and stripes and wiggles, but his favourite pattern of all is a spiral. Looking at pictures of nature in his books, he loves it when I point out the spiral in a seashell or flower. Yeti is a mathematician, and many years ago he introduced me to the wonderous truths of fractals and natural geometry. When I think of truth and beauty, I start spouting Keats and Wordsworth and the English Romantics. Today I thought I'd go looking for some new (to me) inspiration.

Each and All
(Ralph Waldo Emerson)

The delicate shells lay on the shore;
The bubbles of the latest wave
Fresh pearls to their enamel gave;
And the bellowing of the savage sea
Greeted their safe escape to me;
I wiped away the weeds and foam,
And fetched my sea-born treasures home;
But the poor, unsightly, noisome things
Had left their beauty on the shore
With the sun, and the sand, and the wild uproar.
...
Then I said, "I covet Truth;
Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat,—
I leave it behind with the games of youth."
As I spoke, beneath my feet
The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath,
Running over the club-moss burrs;
I inhaled the violet's breath;
Around me stood the oaks and firs;
Pine cones and acorns lay on the ground;
Above me soared the eternal sky,
Full of light and deity;
Again I saw, again I heard,
The rolling river, the morning bird;—
Beauty through my senses stole,
I yielded myself to the perfect whole.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My personal offering this week is a fibonacci poem.

Fern
frond
tight furled
whorling curled
geometric world
uncoiling mysteries beyond
truth beauty unfolding behold golden spirals turn.

(MW)

Poetry Friday

This Friday's Round Up is hosted by Shaken & Stirred.

Winter is definitely here this week, but I have no snow to show, only a lot of cold wind and rain. Wombat and I managed to get out for a bushwalk when there was a short sunny break and I am always amazed how much warmer it is among the trees. This week I am going to share my all-time favourite bush poem. I am quoting it in full as it does not appear anywhere on the internet and I only ever found it in one small anthology. I think it deserves a wider audience!

from 'MAN INTO TREES' for Caroline Kalmar
(William Hart-Smith)

Here, nothing is ever folded
and put away:

leaf, stick, twig, shards
of bark, like shed garments,

are simply dropped when finished with,
and turn to compost where they lie.

Pollen is spilled upon the glass
of a dressing-table top;

earring petals drop
and rust where they are fallen

The floors and walls are damp,
tier upon tier of shelves of stone descend

scattered with gritty pebbles
and glittering sand.

But not a tidy notion troubles
the innocent conscience of this land,

a sweet, sweet odour rises,
a lovely fragrance comes

of spilled unguents, spices,
and aromatic gums.

And now to my own offering - an Alfred Dorn sonnet...

They'll put on party frocks of red and gold,
adorn their limbs in glorious array.
A gaudy show of colour, one last fling,
then, naked, sleep away the winter cold.
In slumber deep they'll dream that soon they may
awaken to the gentle kiss of spring.

But in the bush, that's not how things are done.
Bold eucalypts embrace the winter sun.

She'll swell her trunk and split her skin, unfold
the pearly wood beneath. She'll curl and shred
the dangling, tattered ribbons of the old.
In stormy gales, she'll toss her heavy head.
Where others lose their leaves, she'll keep her hold.
This eucalypt will shed her bark instead!

(MW)

Poetry Friday

Sorry for my absence around here lately - it's been a very cold, very wet week. We've had the chickens living in the parrot cage on the verandah because their shed flooded (good thing Yeti built a huge cage)... the parrot has been living inside because he's scared of the chooks... Wombat is now only napping once a day, and is either exhausted & floppy or overtired & hyper as a result... I am three days late with one assignment and have another due on Monday... and I am still leaking milk & uncomfortable (Wombat, however, seems to have adjusted perfectly well to bottle milk.) But what does that matter now that it is:


I first read this poem in Francis and Clare in Poetry: An Anthology (eds Janet McCann & David Craig).

Saint Francis and the Sow

... sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow...

(Galway Kinnell)

And since I am using Poetry Friday as a personal inspiration as well, here is one from me... My Dad sent me a pile of his nature photos and suggested I write poems for them so we could publish a book together. That was several years ago. I am hoping that Poetry Friday will provide the regular incentive I need to finish writing the project. This is my favourite so far:

Brother Tree Frog ~
no saintly caress needed
to remind you of your innate glory.
Clad in emerald splendour
you squat in plump contentment,
considering
a closer relationship with
Sister Mosquito.

(MW)

Today's Poetry Friday Round-up is thanks to cloudscome at a wrung sponge.

Poetry Friday

I have read some really fantastic poems by following Poetry Friday links... poems I never would have known existed but which I am so glad to have read. I have decided to join in, but when I went looking for a poem I couldn't decide among my many many favourites.

Then out of the blue, I sat down and wrote one. It has been a long time since the last... I have been in a poetry drought for a while and had thought myself deserted by the muse.

This was especially troubling as my attempts to celebrate Wombat in words had all been quickly consigned to the wastepaper bin, deemed unworthy of keeping.

I kind of like this one - it is not brilliant, but it contains the emotions I want to capture of this time in our lives. I hope you don't mind me sharing it. I'm just happy to finally have a Wombat poem ;D

Resistance is futile

When I finally lose my temper
you laugh.

Flick of fingers
on well-padded backside
just another game no pain.

My tears of frustration
music for your amusement.

I'm not really upset.
Mummies don't cry.
When I try
to lay you down, insisting
on naptime, you cling
to the bedside, a furious limpet
resisting all arrest.

(Your daddy and I
thought we defined stubborn
until we met you.)

Give up.

Turn my back.

Pretend to be asleep. You tug
your special blanket over
tucking me in. I croon
Snuggle puppy.

Eventually you flop
exhausted in my arms.

Sunshine scented, your hair
tickles my nose.

This week's Poetry Friday Round-up is hosted by The Simple and the Ordinary.

(After reading some of the beautiful poems from real poets posted this Friday, I am tempted to delete this as lamentably amateurish. I am leaving it, but only so I remember I need to work on it a lot more!)