wisteria pods

With a mouse-trap snap
a wisteria pod splits
spraying bullet seed

 

I was pottering in the garden today and mulching around some wisteria that I grew from collected seed last year. It reminded me of this haiku I wrote last winter.  I had left the wisteria pods on a window sill in a plastic bag, and then forgotten about them. A few weeks later I was startled by sudden bangs and snaps, and found the splitting pods had shredded the bag and sent the seeds across the room!  

as above

The giving grey sky
has sprinkled its final benediction
over the greening fields,
and now the still pools
mirror the changing heavens –
brightening from tarnished zinc
to burnished blue.

in the company of women

We slip from the buildings in ones and twos,
heels clicking across the carpark,
or stepping more quietly in flats.
Slipping away – not quite clandestinely,
but nonetheless with a sense of escape.

integrity (extended version)

This is an extended version of Integrity, based even more closely on Macavity (Eliot, 1939).  

Integrity’s the missing value: I’m told it is assumed
that it’s a value we all share, or so it is presumed.
So it’s a bafflement when Turnitin raises flags in red,
and when we check for plagiarism – Integrity is dead!

silent relic II

For the dVerse “midsummer live” prompt:

A silent relic
recalls bright midsummer songs
through winter darkness.

 

Not live, but rushed to you only a few hours later.   😀
Looking forward to the return of dVerse after your summer break!

blessedly silent relic

A ha’sonnet for Stephen, and his infernal cicadas  😀 

 

Cicada case,
still clinging tight,
through summer days,
through longest night –
you outlasted
noisy bastard
that flew from you.

 

There’s a cicada case on a tree in my chicken coop. It was a lucky insect to make it above chicken height and escape, and I guess it’s left-over case has some of that tenacity.

 

winter solstice

fire beckons to fire
calling the sun
summoning it to rise again
and end the longest night

 

It’s the winter solstice tomorrow, so we had a little bonfire  – useful for calling the sun back after the longest night, and also for clearing up some fire hazard material before bushfire season. And a good excuse for some mulled wine too.  But I didn’t sacrifice a chicken, although Nigel (the cock) is on thin ice.   

 

some thoughts on the utility of bunyips

I was reading Worms’s post about belief, “The answer is a question”. And I started writing a really long comment, and then thought it was a bit rude to take up so much space on her blog for my own musings. So I’m putting them here.

three-way [ 3(C2H2) -> C6H6 ]

Yesterday’s dVerse challenge was to write a trimeric poem. I thought “cool, a chemistry topic! My chemistry is a bit oxidised, but I still remember what a trimer is… right, here we go:

Oh ethyline, oh ethyline
you pretty little thing,
oh my darling little monomer,
from you I’ll make a ring!

0800 biochemistry lectures

This is for the dVerse Monday quadrille prompt “smudge”. A quadrille is 44 words exactly, and must include the prompt word.

I have tried,
I have tried so hard!
I have drunk coffee,
wiggled my toes
sat in the front row
holding my eyes open…
Only to find myself,
again
woken at the lecture’s end
with drool and
a smudge of ink on my cheek.

A lot of my poetry is at least semi-autobiographical. This is definitely autobiographical. Despite quite enjoying biochemistry at uni, I did sleep though almost every 8am lecture, no matter how hard I tried to stay awake. And I woke up more than once with my face stuck to my smudged notes. I don’t know what the poor lecturer thought of me sleeping in the front row with my eyes propped open.