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the woman who loved a hill
she realised that day, canoe cutting silver through
the dark water that slid quiet strokes,
that she loved that hill.had perhaps always loved the hill,
living mystery with steep up down forest slopes
held in the curve soft arm of a river
where once she had sat, river rocked
singing low, her arms encirlcling the sleeping child
now grown to be woman who loves.or sat still forest floor in the hope that
the kid of doe-bushbuck night killed on the road
had lived beyond the headlights and tripped
little sand indent hoofs into the slope forest to hide –
sat so still for so long as the forest turned to morning
hoping to hear the spot-pelt baby calling,
knees pulled up for warmth on the forest floor,
so still that flufftail, that small bird haunting of these mist forests,
had taken form from the leaf litter –
bustled right past the woman’s feet
on twiggy legs, unknowing.
sat long enough to know the little bushbuck was no moreand though she loved this hill then
as women everyhere love hills –
she did not yet know how she loved her –
even when she had come here often
mornings sometimes
before the campers awoke
taken the steep path to clamber the
granite bones of her
around and over – dew wet
to sit silence on the old sand of the cave floor
mid-slope on the grass valley side of the hill –
sat until their bones hummed together
and the roof of the cave swirled with the wings of 10 000 years
sat until the sitting was done and
she could leave that embrace on grateful feet
that picked her way down to the river.and though she loved this hill then
as women everywhere love hills –
she did not yet know how she loved her –
how the shape of hill lived in the woman
how words would fail her –
tide rocked by the river,
as late sun caught tree-line
and shadow and leaf
in the softening light of an autumn eveninghow words always fail us,
small stones to the expanse of heavens,
in the presence of love. -
we are water
wednesday morning after night rain,
out in the dirt road – spade in hand
trying to redirect the run-off
to rain channels and contour ponds
that will fill overflow, soak to the roots
before, steep hill forest,
it will make its way to the small river, deep valley,
that rushes and roars
pulling dead wood and tangle in its flow,
to join the wide swirl forest meander to estuary
that rises and falls with the tide,
surges forward heavy with rain –
breaches the sand bank to
rush cacophonous
into the salt blue waiting of the sea.there is no stopping this water –
this river that flows full – raking its banks clean
with energy enough to shape our world.
and it does.but here, high in the hills
drizzle morning after big rain –
here the water is trickling, moving slow
hesitant finding flow along the fresh scraped gravel –
every angle cut of spade giving pause –
a tentative rivulet filling the depression –
waiting for more water to gather – fill,
until as one they wash the small soil bank
flow momentum, carve snaking streams
through silt and leaf-fall
until gathering and gathering
they pool swirl spill flow seep
to the stream that becomes river becomes roaring.good people of the earth
humans and more thans
we who are many
we are water
we are one
we are you and meif the door to just living
has been closed to us –
if a wall a fence a blockade
has been built that halts natural flow –if your life and livelihood is threatened –
if the place that has made us of its earth
is being claimed stolen mutilated by another –if your songs have been forgotten
if your words are made unspoken
do not lose courage –
you are the head of the stream
a roaring river follows where you have led.we are many
we are water
unstoppable. -
this too is pilgrimage
easter weekend – before
and after autumn rain
we walked the fern path
the damp underfoot path
the deep tree shade
blue sky raven path
that flows along the river
climbs slowly until the quiet deep
becomes the flow rush through river grass,
marimbas smooth over rocks,
dashes pool to pool
until birdsong becomes the river calling loudly
as it falls white water to dark pools.we have come autumn skin
still holding summer’s warmth
to take the waters.
to give ourselves to this,
to her – to the deep startling water
that holds starlight by day,and solemn we may be
in the long foot prayers we have spoken
to the waiting earth, but we smile at the sky
full of chit chat and foolery
until one by one and all together
we match our breath to the crashing falls –
plunge the black pool water
live hair water-weed to the silence until
we break the gasping surface
to laugh banshee as the cold-stolen breath
releases the joy we had carried reverent
like river pebbles and hand fulls of nuts –
releases in laughter that rises from the deep
to clatter bright wings to the sky. -
dust
morning early
before the rain,
before the sun –
the birds, the birds
are waking the dead,
shaping shadows into light
into lightyesterday an adder
crossed the road
scales aglow and
pungent with lifeand i know how it is
when our deities crawl
from dream to bask a while
in the glory of spring sun –and how we in turn,
like the silent scrape
of dust under scale belly,
we ourselves bask
dust in their presence.and if we slough and slough
stand naked with the trees
does all we are not fall away –fall like empires
fall like the rome
all our roads
still lead tofall to the tide
of our own
beautiful undoing
our own beautiful
becoming.before the fall,
before the rain,
before the sun –
the birds, the birds
have wakened the dead,
shaped shadows into light
into light.
Linking to Open Link Weekend #24 over at Desperate poets.
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he who lived to see the spring
deep shadow purple
and heavy with dew
i pick morning violets,small water orbs
petal cupped
refracting silver and spring,held by the sweet scent
of every lifetime spent
wet-kneed in the morning,
picking quiet violets
forest edgeit is a lonely sound
the distant hollow thud
of the gravediggers spade
forest edge
in the morning
but death
has always been
lonely –
unwanted, unsummoned
unexpected
even when it is
inevitableyesterday old brannon-pony
died late evening.
used up his time a decade ago
yet lived on
and still he greeted
in his low breath voice
and scoffed his food,
gums squeaking on
toothless green peaches
late summer windfall
on the lawnand still he walked
on his doddering legs
and still he dreamed
in dapple shade
beneath the trees
in the morning
forest edgewe sat with him,
jem and i,
cloud sky opening
to the stars beyond
as night cold
drew closesat with him
where his legs had given way,
where his breath had slowed,
where warm beneath
his winter coat
fingers and palm
listened as the beat
of the great mother drum
in his chest
became the silence
between stars.forest edge
in the morning
i picked violets
and forget-me-nots
as offering to the gods
of little thingsbecause who else,
in the great wild
heaving of the world,
would notice the passing
of small a old pony –
who else would know
the empty space
he leaves benind
in the morning
forest edge.
Linking to Lonely Town over at Desperate Poets.
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metamorphosis: a record of change
- egg
water dense
and heavy boned –
yet we dream
of flight.- larva
left high and dry
with subsiding rain –
the frog eggs wait
precarious in the face
of a warming windgathering them in a fit of nostalgia she
placed them in the pickle jar older than herself,
filled it with water and pond weed, and waited.the eggs plumped,
became pin prick lives –
black swirls in their little orbs
alone.it took longer than she thought,
the hatching, on her desk at the window
catching afternoon sun and the waning moon
weeks until dark forms began move.tuesday – just before she left for the city
they began, all tail and wiggle
until they hung like stretched
commas along the glass – alive.such odd little things –
gilled grazers of the puddle and pond.i have inherited them for now,
on my desk at the window
learning to swim in afternoon light.
i will release them in a day or two
in a fish free pond
where their chances are good.most will reach puberty
grow lungs and legs
and a taste for the crunch
squish of a long tongue
wrapped around small flesh.they will sing about it
loud at night,
about their crazy years,
their quest for love,
about the rain.will they remember their life
of gill and tail and greens,
or will they believe
they always were
frog.- pupa
late autumn
barred eggarlet moth
takes the sky
lays eggs in the searsia trees –
bundles them tight near the growth tips
flies off on white wings
into the night.in june they hatch –
hardly noticeable at first
in the dark days of winter
a thick green canopy
obscuring their task –by july branches bare of leaf reveal
candyfloss clumps of caterpillars
golden hair catching winter light.they will strip the tree bare
leaf by leaf
cycling nutrients
to the roots below
feeding winter cuckoos
making space in the forest
for light to slip through
while they grow
and grow
and grow.do they know
they will moth –
drop satiated
to the forest floor
build cob cocoons
from their hair and dirtdo they know they will sleep
contained on tree, under rock,
until springgrow wings
take flight
mate, lay eggs
die.do they fear change
would they rather live
caterpillar eternal, forgo flight
for the fear of letting go
what they know
to become
what they areor do they too,
dream of sky.- imago
odd little things
metamorphic formshow will we know
if this is all we are
or if this is
what we lose
on becoming.
For Brendan’s ODD LITTLE THINGS challenge over at Desperate poets.
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Tipping points
1.
tuesday morning
sunbird sang spring –and we
still deep bundled
in winter sleep stumbled
out the house
half-remembering
his song.2.
on my desk between potted plants
and two birdhouses storm-downed
and in for repair – amidst pencils
and paintbrush and candle and river stones –
six ants are carrying off the wing
of a larger, now clearly flightless, insect –i sip of my water
replace the glass to the side
for a better view
of their lumbering task.i’ve moved wardrobes and fridges
and cumbersome dressers up
and down stairs – even moved the piano
once or twice – i know the idle banter,
the careful negotiation,
the counting-in the lift
that it takes to work together –and at what point do i suspend belief
in our own pinnacle of sentience
and know that these ants
have just made another god-awful
joke about the theory of flight
and told each other to mind their toes
while manoeuvring a path across the desk.by the time these words are written
the ants and severed wing have disappeared
over the edge of my desk as ants do –
muttering and grunting as they went.3.
first week of august
and freesia bud pushes
petal and petal
to the winda deep scented
morning cold breatha promise of the year
that turns.4.
yesterday, a welcome respite
from weeks of cold and rain,
was a good day to trim some goats –
the mid-season faces and tails
and feet trims, guaranteed to have us
smelling like a goat by noon –these are the constansts,
the unchanging of here
first freesias in august cold,
taaibos caterpillars path strewn
gathering winter mud for their cocoons,
narina trogon flitting bare-branched
around the quiet garden,
warm fires, dark mornings
goats.but up the road a tide is pushing
a landscape changing irrevocably
in human time –the first fence enclosed a dam,
a spring, a watersource for the living –
then another fence and another
some trees came down
a subdivision or two
then more fence until a walk up the road
becomes a walk between fences 2m tall
with mowed grass verges.two weeks ago
we found man and machine gathered
at the end of the road – measuring
and marking to pave the road
(well the first bit of it anyway)
it is to have curbstones and gutters
and all the trimmings of suburbia –seems the big shiny cars
that live behind nice high fences
feel out of place in these dirt road
forest hills – seems they have chosen
to make a home here – wild life lovers
who want the birds but not the trees,
the bushbuck but not the forest.they sing the song of digger and chainsaw
and brick until they are comfortable,
making it all pretty
and palatable
and nice.5.
it all weighs
weight
stacks up against and on –
some mornings
six blankets under
it is hard to move – face it all
all the constants and changings
and inevitablitiesand yet
just when we feel
there is no lower we can fall
we find ground beneath us – earth
we find ourselves on our knees,
hands cupped with soil
praying.
our mother
who art the only heaven we have ever known
give us this day.6.
there is a
household insecticide
called doom –
(honest truth)it is very popular –
old ladies(among many many others)
in cardigans and sensible shoes buy it,
put it in their shopping baskets
between their thrift pack of apples,
tin of apricot jam and an all purpose cleaner.and oh the awful irony –
of spraying our homes
with doom and then
hoping we are not home
when the apocalypse comes to call –
when it crashes our shores,
or empties our shelves
or melts or burns or infects –
or does any number of things
an apocalypse does.is that it
is that the tipping point?
the incredible human arrogance
that thinks we can spray our house
with doom
and live.7.
in air bright with cold
the full moon rose
in a clear still skyand the hills and the hills
and the hills
rejoiced.
In response to Brendan at Desperate poets essay entitled tipped – read it here https://desperatepoets.com/2023/07/31/tipped/
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elegy under a winter sun: to be the uncountable stars again
1.
i suppose it would happen,
leaning in
to what it means to live
alive in the world
to live truly open,i suppose it would happen
that i would wonder
where you were in the world
where you areand how it happened that
our way together
was lost.2.
when we forget ourselves
for a while –
forget the me, forget the us,
forget who we are as a species,
do we forget the how to’s of living –
the harvest and plant and caress and spin.
do we forget how to live –when we forget
ourselves
for a while
and wake on a morning
in a half foreign body and wonder
where we are
where we were all those mornings
when light first touched leaf –do our hands forget the how to of loving –
how love of here becomes action
becomes living
alive3.
it is hard to remember
contracted contraction
sitting morning desk with scarf and gloves
and windows misted to the world,
it is hard to remember those summer nights,
the expansive singing
of all that lives naming the stars
and the spaces between –its hard to remember who we are
contracted as we are
by the overwhelming what now-ness of the world,
overwhelming breath held-ness
don’t look/don’t look away-ness of the worldit is hard to remember
contractions as we arebut we are all this night rain, big sky, wings wheeled
translucent across the clearing, dance-stamping
splashing ankle knee thigh deep in golden water
as the tide rushes the estaury cold and salt,
clamour valley, tall tree reaching for breath and light
all this, all thiswe are all of this are we not
in the dark between points
of the southern cross stretched
bright on this winter sky,
in the dark in the space between
are uncountable starsand lifting our faces
warm breath to the night
we remember it is the dust of
stars that grows our bones
earthbound
it is the warmth of stars
that animates our formwe are
we carry
we become
all of this.
For Brendan’s wonderful weekly challenge Woe My Spurs: Desperate Elegies
at Desperate Poets. Read his essay here – https://desperatepoets.com/2023/07/17/elegy-for-my-spurs/
Part of the title is lifted from Larry Levis poem ELEGY WITH AN ANGEL AT ITS GATE
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language
are there words
for this light –
words for the way
these trunks twist crevice
for lichen and moss.
is there a name for shadows
strewn forest floor
like windfall petals,when i sit here
really here on this leaf litter floor,
are there words for the forest
that rises and sways through me,
plays me wood string resonant
among the trees.16 April 2023
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synapse
in the space
between
here and now,
in the space
between two hands
held together in prayer,
in the space
between me and i,
the stars lean close
in an expansive sky
remembering –remembering
in the the silence between
that in our bones
in our cells
in the fractal minuteness
of our being
we too
once were
stars.18 April 2023
