A rocky shore
A place to share
With whales, wallabies, lizards
Not mine alone
Put aside thoughts of control
No limits of rocky shore
Lines of whales
Twisted gum trees
Yellow flower vines
No limits to sharing
Freedom of small children
Gleeful exchange with wallabies
Walking by twos low tide
Colourful hats on beach
Joyful seen from above
Trees surpass people
Beautiful reliable diverse
Providing food and living space
To birds and animals
Providing shade and inspiration
To humans
Trees give long lasting comfort and acceptance
The colours, the shapes, the textures
Always inspiring
More beautiful
Than anything made by humans
More beautiful than any sculpture
Any building, any vehicle
Especially eucalypts
Their variety their shapes
their colours, their textures
overwhelming
surprising
delights
trees
The US did this
The US did this
The tragedy of Afghanistan
Used the people of Afghanistan
as collateral damage
in their Cold War
against the Russians
The US did this
The pain of a poet
writing about his father
with Alzheimers
Compare the pain
of being born in
a country of Imperialism
A country of
death and destruction
Crisscrossing the world
like an all-powerful global tornado
creating a wide path
of death and destruction
The poet
trying and failing
to get his father
with Alzheimers
to use the toilet
The woman born
in the USA
trying and failing
to get her country
to respect human rights
to give up global hegemony
to give up militarism, war
and nuclear weapons
Watching Afghans trying
to escape the Taliban
created by the US
to attack the Russians
The pain becomes anger
shouting at the television
The US did this
Objects around
are not mundane
Each one is unique
Handmade by someone
I purchased them
Their provenance forgotten
Their creator unknown
Undocumented
The objects are here
Surround me
Everyday
Do I see them?
Do I overlook them?
The strange polka-dotted beast
from South Africa
A gift from Gabriel
The soft sculpture of a woman
Diddy-wa-diddy
A craft shop visit with Pilar
in the Midwest USA
Once my best friend and confidante
who years later rejected our friendship
The horse and carriage
from recycled bits of metal
Made in Pakistan
The Kansas City ceramic cow
The Kibera 8 collage, a slum in Nairobi
The beachside print by Sheila
inspired by Tucacas
Emerald Suites Venezuela
The camel train oil painting
from a door-to-door salesman artist
in Islamabad Pakistan
The Faberge glass cat
from my aunt in Florida
How did it get to me?
Muddled past
All are here now
Objects around me
Leaving the cinema at night
surprised I can still drive
I am not a character in a film
The streets are Canberra
not France
The lights are shining
on Lake Burley Griffin
Watching movies
brings another reality
a heightened unreality
of the real
Movies take me
in and out of reality
With more space
More options
Everything slightly off
Not quite right
Not quite normal
The reality of movies
More than real
Life worth living
Even if it’s not my life
I love movies!
Rereading The Heart’s Garden
The Garden’s Heart
By Kenneth Rexroth
has sustained me
through decades
His words continue
Almost unknown
Almost forgotten
But they are there
And re reading
Tears of recognition
of thanks and also of sorrow
What else have I forgotten
What else have I left behind
What else is there
To think
To do
To write
To paint
To believe
To remember
What happens to the environment
the earth
the forest
the birds
the plants
the animals
encased in layers of concrete
glass and steel
overwhelming the natural
yet doomed to failure
to falling
Thank you Kenneth Rexroth
Yerrabi Track
Namadgi National Park
Australian Capital Territory
Why move
Just sit
Look
Brindabella mountains
Toothy line to sky
View through burned
Gum trees
Silence
Only one bird
Forest burnt out
What now?
Forward
Write your way
through
Words leaving a trace
On the rock
Comfort zone
Voices
distant
Winter day
Let go
Say no more
Underwater
There is so much
we do not see
We watch the waves
Maybe the whales breaching
But what I want to see
is there
underneath
demanding I change
my frame of reference
from warmth to chill
from light to muted
Adjust your body
Adjust your eyes
Head down
Keep looking
immersed
in water environment
as you never are
in air
walking standing breathing
seeing objects colours
floating in the ocean
Adjust
Accept
Lose track
So that
Astonished
When you raise your head
out of the water
the world is still there
And you will return
Have you heard that expression or did I make it up?
That’s how I felt when I read the positive feedback about my book Tracking the Human in an email from a friend in Kansas City, Missouri, who lives in the neighbourhood where my mother lived.
Here’s what Anne said about Tracking the Human: nobody’s a long time:
“You did a fine job on your book Tracking the Human. What a great approach to telling your father’s story – your painstaking search for facts bring him to life through the device of fiction. Your biography is so readable and so poignant. I’m amazed and moved by what your father – and your mother – overcame. Your depiction of the hobo life is fascinating. What a story of survival.
Your book is a generous exercise in reaching out to the past to understand a man who in so many ways was not kind to you. You too are a survivor. Sending love to you and congratulations on completing this project and doing it so well.”
Many many thanks to Anne. Everyone’s feedback to Tracking the Human is much appreciated.
If you haven’t read Tracking the Human yet, you can purchase a copy on http://www.lulu.com. It’s also available on Barnes and Noble and Amazon websites, but they pay the author very little.
Thanks again for your interest!!
I would like to share information about my book Tracking the Human: nobody’s a long time which I finished writing in January 2020. Because of the COVID19 pandemic there was no possibility of traveling from my current home in Canberra, Australia to the USA to launch the book.
Many years after being disowned by my father and after his death (1971), I made a decision to reconcile with him – with his memory – to construct a portrait of a human being that I could respect. I wrote a novel Tracking the Human: nobody’s a long time based on data I collected about my father’s contacts with the justice system in the USA. He was in and out of jails, prisons and mental health institutions (known as asylums) for many years.
The book Tracking the Human: nobody’s a long time is available on line at www.lulu.com.
Also available on Amazon, but they pay the authors very little.
If you do purchase and read the book, I would very much appreciate your feedback,
on my blog http://www.familyfiction.comor by email at pamela@tucacas.info.
Here’s a comment about Tracking the Human: nobody’s a long time from my friend Martha Woodmansee, Case Western Reserve University Professor of English and Law, emerita.
It being Presidents Day here, I took the day off from politics and paperwork (a euphemism for my present stasis) to read your novel. So delicious! It’s really, really good. I do really wish you’d been able to launch it in Kansas City MO.
If you want to situate your novel thematically in our American literary tradition I’d like to stress its fit into our deeply held embrace of the individualistic self-made man myth — so
destructively sexist and racist in my view — as set forth so brilliantly by F. Scott Fitzgerald in *The Great Gatsby.*
Thanks for your interest!
Pamela Hutchison Collett
Tracking the Human: nobody's a long time 