First quarter 1998, sabbatical in Australia and New Zealand

Glimpsing Australia

Partir, c’est mourir un peu,

I die when e’er I leave.

Plus ça change, plus la même chose, 

 

Apparent change deceives.

 

Say goodbye and die a little

Leave the present tense.

Now I’m free from pressing cares

Why is it a wrench?

 

Should I stay or should I go?

(Plus ça change, la même) 

 

When will I see you again?

Mourir un peu? Je t’aime.

 

 

January 1998

French Lesson en route? Apologies to Dianne Warwick, The Clash, Three Degrees and Jane Birkin.

Similar yet not

Strange southern land

Some spreading ricepaper
Of latest pressing
On that rocky roasting-plate

Others ancient,
Drowsy with dreaming
Lately laced by stubbies

    Strange land
    Strange endurance
    Common lot.

Some far in time and miles
From former homes
Grateful for centuries so still
And former ways so strong

Different to us
Yet sometimes on our track
(Seen sometimes
Hand on fax)

Similar yet not

They free us    

Free us to be similar    

Yet not.

January 1998

Thoughts about the ancient and modern tribes resident in Australia and how the later settlers find spiritual support in the longevity of their Aboriginal neighbours.

Australiettes

Mike’s first school day.

Wiser than her years

After months of prayer for PHDad,

Already knows what’s feral and who’s cool.

Charlie, eager for your eyes

Shares her physio adventure

Looking to an extra day off school,

Middle sister bridging gaps.

Romeo, shimmer still,

Warm encouraging

Listens and smiles,

Whilst adults while time.

Sierra, slim of frame

Carries lightly oldest daughterhood,

Slightly solemn,

Dreaming her future into shape.

Today’s snapshot

Partly lit,

Shadows shifting

With every glimpse.

29 Jan 98

River Sunset, Brisbane

Ferry down the gleaming river,

Foil to rival bankside towers

Past the yachts of Edinglassy

Past the warship now no longer

Shimmer east and over westward

Dazzled in the glare of sunset

Past the convicts’ slimy quarry

Hear the hurt returned to Logan

Sense the same revenge desired

By the native, con and soldier

Shine still onward, glimmer river,

Sprinkle starlight as you shiver.

Edinglassy, the settlement now known as Brisbane.

On the Net

In air and at sea

Restfully surrounded

And alone

Time passing

Stands still

Letting me frame the mind’s eye

Its people and its possible

Its moments asking remembrance

Up there

Out there

Air and water

Netted.

On the river at Brisbane, finding peace travelling by sea and by air.

 

Darwin

The Darwinese,

Siblings to Oz,

Asia their kissing cousin.

Tropical tribe

Mixed race,

Children of Brisbane and Bali.

Roof-fans and tree frogs

Rainforest and box-jellyfish,

Today’s news from the plane, after lunch.

Arid acres south

Warm seas north.

Eureka

Ballarat, scene of would-be dreams.

Diggers’ gold bought drinks paid bills changed lives built town

Now tourists

Late for luck

Pan too.

Then

Thirty miners and five police

Fought until death

Civil outrage

In a land of little (white) strife.

Now

The shaft’s still fruitful

When digging

For a fair go

This nugget,

The true enduring Standard.

                                                        

February 1998, Ballarat.

In Love

Dreamed Out

All dreamed out.

Memories scoured

Agonies emptied

Joys raptured.

Lost for words worth ink

I come back to everyday songs stories people.

Amused, muse absent.

Stilled enough to ask

Why not me?

Why watching and listening,

Why not making?

The answer:

Live this moment

Ears eyes nose open.

Refuse to see it dead,

Demand its secret.

Touched by its value

React.

February 1998, Ballarat.

Newcomer

Alone with others

Mutually unknown

After easy solitude

Acquaintance slowly self-assembles.

This the early time

Enjoyable isolation

This, a pattern so familiar

Ice breaking

While my mind is on warmer waters past.

Why begin again?

Look to last time

For your answer.

February 1998, Melbourne.

Distant Whistling

Does distance over-dramatise?

Does it ease us into attitudes

Otherwise not ours?

Or does it bruise us into anguish?

Stripping truth to the bone.

Free to meander

I wonder round my mind,

Glancing at the white-plastered bricks

Of this Cathedral cell,

At one with Empire exports

Half a world distant from their loves

This elsewhere, elseworld, all around,

Now for them a nightmare with no rousing

For both keepers and kept,

Tending their tight and anxious breathing,

Scanning the seas for memories.

‘Tyranny of distance’, people used to say.

Self-confident they pine no more

And yet, under their luminous sky,

Come black holes to mind.

                                                       

February 1998, Melbourne.

 

Letterless

Another day,

Crushed.

Better to know there’s nothing

Than expect.

Expect zero,

Handbrake happiness.

True,

Postmen don’t deliver

Friends write late,

So why this grim intensity?

Joys remembered

Jolt.

That shared life, laughter,

Eyes that say

‘You count’.

Falling headlong from those heights,

Each message breaks my fall.

February 1998, Melbourne.

 

Burning the Midnight Oil

Curious thrill of guilt

Leaving the Cathedral after nightfall

For St Kilda’s ‘grunge and scunge’.

Curious too

To stand with concert faithful

And feel apart,

A story replicated

Shoulder to sweaty shoulder.

Elderly at 37

Yet younger than the band.

Unable to sleep

While the beds are burning.

February 1998, Midnight Oil concert at St Kilda, Melbourne.

Silver Screen

Silver screen our waking dream.

Dream with your lush colours

Overhead, within, along,

In that broad landscape

Make us hear: Belong

Silver screen

Our earthly dream

Dream of losers exultant

When loss turns victory,

Able now

To bear the waking day.

Silver screen

Repair our dreams

Dream us into others’ lives

Familiar but unknown,

Enmeshed in them

We know their flesh our own.

Silver screen

Our mutual dream

Dream with us,

Wider and kinder

Christened in your gleam

Petty minds now noble

Failures now redeemed.

Silver screen

Our waking dream

                                     

February 1998, Melbourne.

Centreward

Swaying down the rails

With a slumbering payload,

The Afghan hound

Sprints towards stillness.

And catches it?

But does the desired calm

Disregard this effort?

Does it fall like manna,

Or is it only caught

By hearts and minds prepared?

How then to prepare?

Emptying or filling

To teasing in the peace?

For my sake,

May the centre

Grab each of us

Despising our preparation.

Majestic,

May the desert and the rock

Send us away chastened

Decentralised

Each ‘I’

Relocated

In a wide horizon.

 

Twinned 1

A pair of ghost gums

Lean and parched.

Miraculous

Luxuriant

Mutuality

In a scorched crevice

Of King’s Canyon.

Theirs a secret source.

Twinned 2

Blanched silhouette on the night sky,

A frozen crone by day,

Scorched, ragged and gawky

She ranges over bush

Scuppering any anglo-landscape

Her partner the spiniflex,

Low and stocky

Wiry and without splendour

Its alone the mighty Nullabor

Only at that desert’s outskirt

Returns the gum

A daytime spark of night

Approaching the city

The line of gum steps back,

Remembering its eerie kin 

Held hostage in the Park.

And for its scrubby partner spiniflex?

No such shame.                                                        

March 2003, At the Red Centre

Patrick’s Day

Distant,

The blues sax plays Danny Boy

At the Orient Hotel.

The band plays and the faithful reel.

High foam hats

Signal playful patriotism

Northsoutheastandwest

Shamrocks on the black stuff

Tut-tut if you will

But do so with a smile

Glad for Irish eyes

On an ungreen isle

Far from Tipperary

On Sydney’s Rocks

17 March 1998, Sydney.

Manly

Four dozen red-eyed gulls

Watch him snack on Manly beach,

Each screeching for a chip.

One arm lifted raises half of them

He stands, scatters,

And the leftovers are gone

With the gannets.

Sharing a vigil

For the Big One

The line of surfers wait,

Bobbing in solidarity.

Arriving, it smashes their equality

The exalted swerve and sway,

The damned bite the foam

Spluttering to the surface

They see their betters run out of wave,

Human too,

Swallowed by broken breakers.

The voracious now departed.

He waits too.

March 1998, Sydney.

Sailing from Manly

Breaching the sentry harbour’s heads,

The intruding ocean

Jostles the domesticated ferry.

This tussled tourist’s thoughts

Turns to transportation horrors,

No land since Gravesend,

Former lives

Long buried.

These days different,

Tamed inlets yachtified

Speed boats skim past the prison island

Leisuretime sails mass like gulls homing

As glowing evening glares before embering.

The end in sight now,

Clouds hang

Under the wide-skied bay

(An embrace extended

From mother Oz)

Hungry for home,

A single gull leads the eye

To the city’s manhatting towers

And their much encored jewel,

Its quay

Opening Oz to us.

March 1998, Sydney

Club Croc

Bring the folks

(Maybe for a wedding)

Sun-loungers a-plenty

Day and evening carers for the kids.

Come for Coral Sea breezes

Where palm sprouts palm

And muzak trills:

Gypsy kings ‘speak softly love’

Piano tinkles, sax sulters,

Endless Estefan.

Chilled beer at 10.30

Fine young cannibals up early

The waist-high pool their bar

Last night dimly hazy

Shelter from their red-eyed gals

The tune ‘She drives me crazy’.

Today’s cocktail: Summer Breeze

Today’s activity: Champagne Twister

For the hearty jetski or tube,

Glass-bottomed cruise,

Snorkels, flippers,

Or paraglide by teatime.

Club Croc

The place to be.

The tune

‘Don’t cry for me’.

Then Came Damsels

Club Crocodile

Paddling a flat canoe in a Barrier bay,

All around me sailing

Workaday able,

Stealthy waves remote approach.

Over confident

Up ended.

Hat still on,

But humbled hanging on,

To right myself unable.

Then came damsels

To my rescue.

Expert oar assistance

From a mother and daughter,

Making all aright.

Moral?

Take the safer path,

Baywatch

Mums and babes.

Whitsunday Tourist Trail

Club Crocodile to Shute Harbour,

Calm hills distant

Low beneath ice-cream cumuli

In a blueberry sky.

Fingertips away

Serenity smithereened

Coral sea a whiskered acquamarine,

Water wall behind beside

White horses flicking spray in midgallop

Across the ferry tail.

Episode closing

Reef peace yearning

Quick return choosing.

Tearoom, 1

Nelson’s ‘Simply Food Tearoom’,

A city with fields off the High Street

And a mountain at the end of the lane.

Half a sandwich costs a dollar ten,

And so does the other half.

Lavish care for the senior

Out from her care home,

The highlight of today and toweek

A joke with the young man,

Replacing his healthy breakfast

With something sweet.

Opposite, builders restore

A bastion of Nelson’s past,

Conduit for the river of tea

Flowing since its foundation,

The customary British baptism.

Weak or strong

Often English Breakfast,

Here they keep the Faith.

Tearoom, 2

What is this voice?

Smile or sneer?

Eyebrow raised bemused, amused?

No hurt intended

Only a first impression,

A Polaroid emerging from the mist

Calling forward

Clarity and colour.

March 1998, Nelson, New Zealand

Grieving

The news from Monáco

I heard at Kaikoura.

I sat and wept inward.

Knocked out on away goals

How heed Chubawumba?

Knocked down won’t get up.

Timarú to Tekápo

Resound to my grieving.

Like Schmeichel riven.

 

Champions League exit.

March 1998, Timaru, New Zealand

Road to Nowhere

Twenty minute parole in days en route,

Pausing at Kalgoorlie Pizza

For goldfield Garlic Bread.

The wild colonial TV hero

Consults the blackfellah

Wondering at the stranger’s will

To put a road through his Dreaming.

Whitefellah need it

“Not get lost”

“What is get lost?”

My ticket shows me the way

To get lost?

April 1998, Western Australia.

Ensnorkelled

Suddenly I see !

Sight sharpened without specs

Light so bright

And breathing too!

Suddenly brother

To a flatfish floating by,

As we’re related

He lingers in armsreach

Unafraid.

Elsewhere more marine Eden

Perfect creation and no forbidden fruit.

These moments a hint

Of a lost initial bliss,

A pledge of its return.

March 1998, Wadjemup aka Rottnest Island, Perth, Australia.

Above Average

Final Call,

Bar and café, Perth

(Not just a teashop)

Confidential calm

And a licence to linger.

Cloud Nine’s cappuccino?

Another plane.

April 1998, Perth.

Away and Back

Return to warmth and wilderness

The sun high over its lucky country

Visitors glowing and entranced

Whilst local avoid UV’s

A warm welcome where visitors are few

So much fire,

Not so much to do.

Return to warmth and wilderness

April showers its gifts

On a corner of this old capital

Parched though the sun don’t shine

The gardener returns,

Unburnt spring

His heart’s glow.

April 1998, Perth airport