Poem Series: Colours
Category: Poem
This is new
12 April 2020
Time
Is that the engine of change?
Is it time?
How do we change
as a person
as a society
My changes
slowing down
not just physically
due to age
i.e. time
but psychologically
with thought
with letting go
letting go
of judgment
of guilt
of anxiety
of worry
Is that what anxiety is?
Worry
Forecasting doom and gloom
Forecasting
Unnamed unknowable
Fear
Yet there is an ongoing crisis
Pandemic of COVID 19
And
Global warming
Consuming the globe
with various levels of understanding
and reaction
How to be more aware
Awake
Alive
To watch a bee circling a shrub
Listen for birds
Squawking
Distant hum of traffic
Sitting on a balcony
On a no street
A slow street
A street where
Three cars pass in a day
More birds pass than cars
Accepting that life is beyond control
Yet not beyond action
Pleased
with a new found ability
to sit and look
and listen
without doing
anything
This is new, different
Loss and grieving
I am in Canberra Australia
Far far from the USA
I grew up in Kansas City
Moved to the San Francisco Bay
Listening to the music
of Soul, Motown
Thinking of that music
today
The hope
The love
The promise
Otis Redding
Aretha Franklin
Nina Simone
The Temptations
Stevie Wonder
Diana Ross
Ray Charles
Smokey Robinson
The Temptations
Sam Cooke
The Supremes
Lou Rawls
Percy Sledge
Margin Gaye
Tina Turner
Gladys Knight and the Pips
(Partial list)
Listening today
on YouTube
after reading about overwhelming
numbers of deaths of African Americans
in the USA
during the COVID 19 pandemic
Mourning the loss
Listening to the music on YouTube
Remembering the joy
in an African American café
in Oakland California
November of 2008
The election of Barack Obama
44th President of the USA
People crying
shouting
dancing
singing
saying “I wish my mother was alive today”
People believing
“A Change is Gonna Come”
(Sam Cooke song)
and yet
and yet
Who is dying today
in the USA
in the pandemic?
Escape
Let me sit
for awhile
and see if I feel better
Alienated by anti-poetic words
Symposium presentations
deadening of affect
My mind engorged by a headache
My limbs growing numb
I hurry out of the room
grab a sugary treat
to sit outside
in the sun
Building walls covered by harsh
techno renderings
of the beauty
of Sidney Nolan paintings
Walls coloured
a blue not of the sky
a blue with more green
than the piercing sky blue above
The walls asymmetric pattern
Yellow tiles in a ragged diagonal
small black square tiles
interspersed randomly
with colourized tiles
The sun on my back
Renewing
I cannot return
to the symposium
Dead words
causing bodily pain
Back inside the gallery
to briefly re-absorb
Sidney Nolan’s paintings
Then going out to catch
the Rapid 6 bus
taking me home
Poems in the haze of bushfires Part III
Poems in the haze of bushfires Part III
25-27 December 2019
Camping at Pinch River, Kosciusko National Park NSW
Found objects
at the camp site
A footy ball
A rusted hammer
Size twelve men’s black canvas shoes
A green and purple tennis ball
Sunglasses missing one lens
What else has been
left behind?
What hopes dreams
prayers
words
hugs
games
music
occurred
at this campground?
Were lives changed
enriched
enjoyed
from being here?
Who is to know?
Only trash
burned out campfires
left behind
Someone built
a rock dam
We enjoy the pool
as do the birds
kangaroos
who come by
for a drink
and watch us
watching
Sadness comes and goes
Beauty of the trees
the creek
Sadness of the grey haze
Smoke of bushfires
cover the sky
devour the land
Where is the future?
Poems in the haze of bushfires Part II
Poems in the haze of bushfires Part II
25-27 December 2019
Camping at Pinch River, Kosciusko National Park NSW
Climbing up a hill
through grey trees
stepping over residue
Rabbit droppings
Horse manure
Kangaroo dung
Huge white bones
of a dead horse
What is alive
in this forest
ants
cicadas
occasional birds
What is alive
in the flowing creek
No fish
No frogs
A bird takes a drink
A kangaroo hops by
A red and orange wasp
flies over
Poems in the haze of bushfires Part I
Poems in the haze of bushfires
25-27 December 2019
Camping at Pinch River, Kosciusko National Park NSW
25 December 2019
Blue sky above
after weeks of
smoky haze
The world on fire
or at least
a continent on fire
The glory of clouds
only visible when
against blue sky
The sun
shining through
spreading out
its rays
after days
as a red ball
surrounded by
grey smoke haze
The sounds of
the river
and the cicadas
In the stream
water rushing over
a rock dam
Cicadas crescendo
Orange ball sun
Shrouded in smoke haze
Bushfire season
Cleaner birds
Black feathers
Red eyes
White tipped wings
when in flight
Waiting in trees
Will they drink
at the stream
if I leave
Dried up forest
Adult kangaroo
Two juvenile roos
Forage by the creek
Stream colour changes
brown green gold
Boulder colour changes
grey blue orange pink
The sun decides
The Wrong Amazon
Talking with the delivery guy about farming He smells of cigarettes I want to tell him to stop smoking But I don’t I listen and find out His was a farming family Hard life Father told him Don’t be a farmer So he’s a delivery personThinking about land every day The destruction of Mother Earth Thousands of hectares every day deforested in Australia Trees cut down Amazon burning As one youth activist quipped on a poster The wrong Amazon is burning I don’t even know what a hectare is I have never lived on a farm I have lived in cities and towns on six continents Hiking in the bush just outside town I see parched earth Erosion like the deep cut on my arm But the cut was sewed up closed up Now healed Leaving only a slightly pink and purple scar
How to heal the earth? Some farmers know how The earth can be renewed But forcing the land to yield immediate results leads to long-term destruction Farmers becoming delivery people
The Ramp
Rounding a corner from a gallery exhibition Walking up a ramp with no destination Black tiled floor Grey cement walls Polished silver handrails Blinking white floor lights Triangular window looking down on fern palms in a secret garden below No paintings or people visible in the crowded museum Silence only my own footsteps and the distant click clack of someone’s high heels
Compulsion
I never think of
my city
my country
As if I own it
I think
I’m here, now
When asked
Where are you from?
I answer
wherever I’m currently living
– Narrabundah (Australia)
– Nairobi (Kenya)
No, but where are you really from?
As if that will “place” me
confine me
describe me
Do I detect a U.S. accent?
Where are you from in the U.S.?
My (unspoken) reply:
How much time do you have?
Do you really want to know my life story?
All the places I’ve lived and worked
Is this my identity?
Tracking the Human: nobody's a long time 