the kangaroo and the ute

It’s OLN at dVerse tonight (this morning), and Lisa has provided, for our inspiration, Edward Lear’s “the duck and the kangaroo”.

With apologies to both Lear and Lisa: 

Said the kangaroo to the ute
You’re a fine looking automobile
To travel with you would be beaut,
Strewth, mate, that’s how I feel.
I’m not asking you for a seat
On account of my ginormous feet,
I’m a macropod to me boots,
Said the kangaroo to the ute.

Obliquity III

Following on from “lower right cheek”…. 

So I’m hearin’ how way, way up north,
spring has sprung – flowers, so forth.
Well down here on mum Earth’s bum cheek,
it’s flamin’ freezin’, the sun’s gawn weak.
She’s gettin’ up, each day, more late,
still, she’ll be apples, no worries, mate –
no dunny budgies up me nose,
yeah, and all them bloody mozzies froze.

lower right cheek

For the dVerse Monday haibun prompt “flower moon“:

Glimpsed for a moment through the thick autumn fog, stubble coloured sheep speckle stubble covered paddocks. A wheel thumps over a dead ‘roo, a fresh bloody mass smeared further across the tarmac by my passing. I turn up the fan to dispel the mist growing, by some sympathetic magic, on the inside of my windscreen.
Watching the car thermometer dip below freezing as I roll down into the valley, I ponder this morning’s poetry prompt: flower moon. In the northern hemisphere anemones, bluebells and lupins are flowering, and corn is being planted.

On the earth’s arse, just
a week away from winter –
no flowers here, mate.

Friday afternoon school run

Parents wait at the gate for the cages to be opened
and the flock,
bright as grass parrots in their green and yellow,
to come flying out.

Hands are held across the road:
look right, look left,
look right again –
walk straight across, don’t run!

I know you

Oh my goodness! It’s a dVerse prompt during Australian EST waking hours! Meet the bar waltzing… My favourite waltz is Tchaikovsky’s  sleeping beauty waltz, which I used to like playing on my clarinet, although it’s better on violin. How long has it been since I played? I wonder if I still can… 

The reed on my tongue tastes
of grasses, river banks,
sunshine under blue skies.

wound

For the dVerse Monday quadrille prompt “What’s in a word?”:
The challenge is to write a quadrille, so that’s exactly 44 words, including the homograph pair (same spelling different meaning) “wound”.

 

Did you never wonder where my words went?

I wove them into bandages,
and wound them well about me
to dress the wound yours left.

But your words still fester within,
and my own have become a winding sheet
that I tied too tourniquet-tight.

casting nasturtiums

We finally got a decent frost and it’s killed off a bathtub full of nasturtiums. So I pulled them all out this afternoon and threw them to the chooks, who were very happy to have them.

Cookies and Cream, sweet as a dream
but rarely ever an egg between.
Ninja’s a handsome Australorp hen,
she used to lay well, but that was then…
The same is true for the five misses Brown,

how many hyacinths is enough?

I have sown many mice in the past week, and to celebrate I have ordered 50 hyacinths. I have tried to cut back, but the end of season catalogues are irresistible. I don’t even know where I’m going to put them all. I’ll just have to buy some pots. 

 

There is a line somewhere between
optimism and idiocy.
But herein lies the difficulty-
once it’s passed it can’t be seen.

So on I go, keeping my eyes on
another boundary now instead,
I’m charging on, full steam ahead
racing towards the sanity horizon.

But still, yet still, my resolve is hard,
Can you hear that keyboard tapping sound?
I’m buying more things to put in the ground!
Please, someone take away my credit card…

morning commute II

A somewhat late response to the dVerse Tuesday prompt “Blue Tuesday”. Work’s been busy lately, lots of deadlines looming, lots of meetings, lots of things to “operationalize” (how do you do a vomiting emoji in WordPress???)…  So I’m hiding in my office with the door closed and the light off, typing as quietly as I can to preserve a bit of the blue sky of home before I have to actualize somebody’s roadmap or elevate some excellence.  But Teams just pinged me a “join meeting” so this will have to do:

I have come down from the hills,
where spider webs glitter with frost,
where currawongs call greetings,
where kangaroos nod as I pass,
and where the sky is saturated with blue,
a blue that pours down, over me,
into me, filling and overflowing.

pretty mice all in a row

I dug the ground, I planted seed,
in the night, mice came to feed.
I bought more seed, planted again,
and in the night, yet more mice came.
Now I’m out of seed, and I’m out of nice,
I’ve laid the traps, and I’m planting mice.
and once I’ve planted a nice long row,
above the mice my seeds will grow.

and in ha’sonnet form for Stephen, here is the next episode:

I planted seed
all in a row.
The mice did feed,
no seed did grow.
Now planting mice
in rows all nice,
to feed the seed.

 

There is currently a mouse plague in western NSW. It’s not as bad here, but there are a lot more than usual.