Poems

Gang-gang

Gang-gang cockatoo inseparable from your mate;
for seasons you have made an entrance,
player in a stage drama, descended

onto the shallow bird bath. As the lead,
you represent Sydney’s last
diminishing colony of your race.

When you sweep in, deep wing beats,
you skim along the runway of azalea blooms.
In an ambience of apricity, I observe

your free flight through the bush reserve;
I know why this time you alight alone.
I watch your actor’s bow to the water,

curved beak leading to its cere,
eye staring off across your canopied
territory of eucalypts;

I weigh the wispy crest, your every
layered scarlet feather pressed
above the charcoal, the tapered tail.

I am witness to your struggle to endure;
this is no pantomime as you battle
for survival. You insist I ruminate

on the bedrock, the essence of existence.
You spur me to succumb to the isolation
of your characteristic rasping screech.

You elicit the tang of your dank habitat,
the zest of the underwood where
the valley shelves away; you ferment me

into introspection. As you sit,
still and statuesque, you usher me
to speculate on the possibility

of avian grief without comprehension.
I see you soar away and am compelled
to contemplate my milestones of memory,

the loss of influences, of mentors
and teachers, the exemplars of grace
through the decades of a lifetime.

Awarded First prize in the Ros Spencer Poetry Prize 2021

The Ablation of Time

At close range the clash
of a cloudburst lapses
in an instant.

Trussed up like bulging penguins,
we huff, our breath freezing on our faces.
Belittled as krill by the blue bolt glacier,
one mile wide,
as it enters the ocean.

Novice glaciologists analyse the rifts
and the stretched crevasses,
cavities in the body of serrated ice
held only by tensile strength.

The crowd murmurs, anticipates the spectacle,
the sonorous drumfire, of ice ablation.
An observer predicts, with conviction,
that any minute a precarious slab, angular,
will break loose and collapse.
Ecstasy for the enthusiasts.

An hour later, spectators grow listless.
It seems that, with debutant reluctance, ice calves
not to the minute but to the chronicle
of the ages.

Published in Quadrant 2017

Flute Notes

“I lean back, as the evening comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.”

James Wright

When I hear you whistle, your repeated king parrot
flute notes, I know that you have come to rest
in our feed tree.

When you tinkle like a glass wind chime,
the almost silent strain teased out by the breeze,
you devour the ripe seeds with quiet application,
leave the squabble to cacophonous lorikeets.
As I sit, you open me to my existence.
You launch, lift across the haze of the valley
the screech of steam train brakes, weekend excursion,
the distant pitch of an A380
on its destined descent to Mascot.

When you beat in, wayfarer on the wing,
slow and low motion, I see your meticulous scarlet splash
as you hang, acrobat not quite camouflaged in the massed greenery,
invisibly connected to your mild mate clinging, clinking nearby.
You discard used husks, dense leaves,
as you graze and scatter, polite wastrel.

I observe the variable greens of the lush bush,
the cumulus clouds drifting high beyond you,
you lead me into the shades of light.

When I inhale, concentrated detection,
the floating pollens of late spring
or the moist must of an autumn storm,
you reveal to me the frail balance of nature.
You draw my attention to dank leafiness,
to the rustle of unsettled fronds.
I am aware of the essences transported on
the long-awaited southerly at dusk,
the close of an extended January day.

When I sip the strong ochre tea steaming in the mug,
I watch your race against the light in the drooping foliage;
I taste regrets, you challenge me to consider the years spent
away from the hammock.

When the sun fades from my face,
or the misty drizzle fluffs your feathers
and I reach for a jacket as the daylight pales, I touch,
reflect upon my memories layered through the decades,
yearn for a release from what is not important.

Commended in the Ros Spencer Poetry Prize 2020

Coagulated Time

At first it could be any peaceful village clinging
to the coast, not many shops;
houses with ocean views dot,
hold fast to the escarpment.

At the heritage wooden wharf, cafe chic
on the water’s edge,
everyone goes about their business.
We scour, investigate beyond the facade
of appearances, the pretence of resilience.

We search in cul-de-sacs; the burnt out houses
and vacant blocks elude us;
surely they have not been rebuilt.

Walls of flame sear the imagination,
an ash-filled nightmare,
singed specks float in the scorched air
and settle bobbing, lapping,
the troubled sea.
A scalded possum squeals,
the aftertaste of wildlife.
Gutted houses of the mind
disappear in an instant.
Sooty time, condensed time coagulated;
the blood chills in the heat.

Dwellings destroyed at random,
the occasional one left untouched
in the residual detritus. The placid expression
of a child’s teddy, charred,
original ears spared.

The melancholy, the hope, proliferation
of freshly green foliage sprouting
on scarred charcoal trunks.
Houses reappear; the people may be as dust
but they bear all things,
endure all things.

Published in Messages from the Embers anthology 2020

From Impermanence

The abandoned railway siding bisects
the line between nowhere and further out,
parboiled by the slaughter of the sun.
Redundant rolling stock anchored here
rusted out in an age before memory.

Dust compressed like stone
by the history of the harvest,
mice dart through dank spillages,
the residual of primeval crops.
Silos, shrouded in pathos,

quiver in the throb of the heat.
Constellations of capeweed flourish
where all else has declined, decayed.
Structures of scrap reveal the past,
retract the failing future.

I recall when wheat lorries
laden into the distance queued
for the overworked auger
corkscrewing reaped grain
upwards into rail trucks.

Days of family farms now withered, wilted
into chancy gambles. Under layers of hazy sky,
exhausted bark trails from a solitary eucalypt.
Reminiscences swoop like swallows from nests clustered
on lonely rafters in disused sheds; the grit of silence.

Awarded First prize in the Jean Stone Poetry Award 2022

Migration of the Bar-Tailed Godwits

You scour and scrounge across the tidal flats
to fortify for savage days at sea,
fatiguing flight through trackless habitats;
you probe with needle beak among the scree.
A time to wade, to sift the shrinking tide
for protein foods, a rich invertebrate,
prepare to halve your weight, the salt-wild ride,
prepare and prime to scrap and navigate.
From Hen and Chicken Bay, the urban sprawl,
you battle squalls and blizzards as you soar
across the wash, the cruel Alaska haul,
exhausted when at last you reach the shore.
You venture way beyond your hemisphere
for you must breed; you strive and persevere.

Awarded First prize in the Scribes Writers Poetic Licence Awards 2020

The Straining Rowlocks

An ageing man, you sip your coffee at the cafe wall;
the estuary is out of sight but, like a monk meditating,
you immerse yourself in the mantra
of the rowlocks, the river’s rusty gates.

Your mind merges with the current and you know that
the oarsman reaches his wrists, heaves against the running tide.
The pier moans to the surge of the stream and you absorb
the yammering of the shipwright’s winch.

You recollect a life of muckin’ about in boats,
recall secluded days submerged, the technique
of catching fish with bait. You imagine a reverent selection
of the sharpest barbed hook.

You weight it with a split shot sinker suitable
for the flow; you cast, sew the needle
and thread with precision into the quivering quilt,
your frame braced low in the sanctity of ritual.

With flexed fingers you tighten the line pressure,
grip the cork firmly with the other hand.
In the brushstrokes of the washed watercourse
the wind lifts the rhythmic ripples,

the eddy of memory; nearby mooring ropes buckle,
yachts bounce in balance. Absorbed anticipation
seated on the gleam of fluid diamonds and then the jagged tug,
repeated as you allow the line to set.

When the bream is landed, slapping tail and spicy smell,
its gills leak reddish brine around your bare toes.
A pitching curtain of seagulls circles
your sanctuary, wheels away your furies

and your griefs up the stained glass cliffs.
At the end the estuarine slime slides sideways
from the anchor as you haul it across the gunwale,
square your shoulders for the row home.

Decades of memories; you search for yourself in the slam,
the smack of the straining rowlocks.
It is time to request the bill.

Awarded Second prize in the Tom Collins National Poetry Prize 2019

Birthday Ballot

My eyes grapple with the diffusion of headlights,
oscillation of wipers in the downpour
and I am immersed in the insistent chords
of a guitar laden with the lyrics of Don Walker.
The alchemy of Khe Sanh spirits, commandeers
me back to the early seventies.

I am transported to the sappers.
In a pitch-dark deluge like this,
gun turrets and slush banish daydreams
of beaches and cobalt rockpools.

Recollections of the birthday ballot,
tremble of black and white TV in the corner.
My fingers drag a crested envelope from the letterbox,
the afternoon breeze brings ironic coo
of peaceful doves.

Mist of defoliant invades the recess
of my imagination; a persistent aftertaste
of the jungle, the tang of perspiration.

In my speeding cocoon I mouth a prayer
of thanks for the deferral,
the abolition of national service.
Staring into the dappled darkness
I touch the pain of a generation.

Published in Eureka Street 2018