Good things only #3 / sevenling (roses)

Finally the teaching-year is done for me, with just graduation to go next week.   So I’m hoping to find more time for reading and writing now.

It’s been a challenging year, and the last few months in particular have been difficult. So here is a floral pick-me-up, for myself and anyone else who needs to stop and smell the roses.

1.  The lilies are just starting to bloom! First the Asiatics, but soon the Orientals and trumpets will be blooming too!

2. Hearts-ease – also known as Johnny-jump-ups or violas – are in bloom in all sorts of unexpected places. These first snuck into my garden ten years ago as stow-aways in a pot of something else, and they’ve spread to come up year after year in pots and bathtubs and garden beds.

for L_, who I trust and respect

I didn’t go to his funeral. Even if I could have, I would not have gone. Funerals are for the living,

fair is a four letter word

For the dVerse Monday quadrille (poem in 44 words exactly) prompt “let’s go to the fair” (include the word fair): 

 

“It’s not fair, I’m not tired yet!”
“It’s not fair, vegetables are disgusting!”
“It’s not fair, showers are boring!”
“It’s not fair, everyone else has that game!”

“Why are you so unfair?” 

From the mouth of a child,
fair is a four letter word.

what I wanted to say…

…in my Friday and weekend emails and “chats” to the 10% of my colleagues who cause 90% of the problems because they either ignore the grade submission deadline, discover they don’t know how to use the system until after the deadline and expect help on the weekend, or are just too bloody ODD to do anything properly and on time without having to be asked five times and then argue about it:  

 

I’m the parent that’s less fun

(the one that makes you brush your teeth)

I’m the teacher that’s more mean

(the one that won’t let you in the lab barefoot)

I’m the director that sends the angry emails

(the one that makes sure marks come in)

 

Or here’s another way of looking at it,

I’m the one that:

keeps the kids healthy,

the students safe,

and makes sure the system works.

 

Did you ever think that maybe I get tired of

     being the grown up?

     being the responsible one?

     being the bad guy?

and would like to not give a shit about

dental costs,

legal liability and

graduations,

either?

 

Did you ever stop to think that if you

JUST

DO

YOUR

FUCKING

JOB

then I won’t have to be the bad guy?

 

Let’s do the experiment and see what happens.

 

memory is a fickle friend

One of these days I’ll get up early enough to join a dVerse OLN live session… in the meantime, asynchronous will have to do.
This started as a line in my last poem, that a couple of people said they liked.

Memory is a fickle friend at best,
at worst, a false witness.

Like a blind man asking
a confidante to describe a photograph,
we ask her to tell us our past.

But she cannot.
The past is gone.

So memory,
like a historical novelist,
must construct a story from the scraps –
one true enough that the lies don’t catch our eyes,
one false enough that we can stomach it.

And so she obfuscates and extrapolates,
filling in and filtering,
redacting and recolouring
to give us what we want
(or maybe what we need):
a yesterday revised to suit our today.

in the moonlight of other nights

For the dVerse “in the light of other days” prompt, a request to share a memory, recent or past.  This is a little of both, and the possum shown in the pictures here, that I took last night, may well have been the baby of an earlier season’s “poss”.

Poss has come visiting again.

Caught in the torchlight
she runs up a post
only to discover her way blocked.

Was there no roof here last time she visited?
Or has she forgotten?

Memory is a fickle friend,
hers and mine.

some notes for Selma

Some notes for Selma on orbits, because I couldn’t put all this in a comment.

I can’t add a file other than an image, so here are my notes on orbits for Selma as a bunch of images. If they look fuzzy, just click on the image and it will display as a nice clear version.

confession of a physicist

So, I wrote my last post in response to the dVerse prosery prompt, which was to write up to 144 words of prose including  the line “I am bombarded yet I stand”. Then I thought I’d better actually read the poem by Adrienne Rich, “Planetarium”, that the line comes from.  And I wrote this as my proseyness instead: 

XXXXXX

XXXXXXI have a confession:

I don’t like astronomy. I find it really boring.

Go on, gasp in horror. Judge me soulless.

then who?

I question whether I could be kinder. Whether I should be kinder. Whether, once (twice?) rejected, I have the right to simply opt-out now.
I am tempted to say nothing, or to speak only platitudes. That would be so easy, to nod and abide by her mantra of “we’ll see what happens”.
But we’ve seen what has happened. What has happened, on the golden child’s watch. The golden child who only ever tells her what she wants to hear. Until the police and social workers are listening.
Silence might be a kindness in the moment. But his complicity in the fantasy that everything is alright is how we got to here.
So, I make the phone calls, I make the decisions, and I take her complaints and accusations. I am bombarded. Yet I stand. Because, if I am not my mother’s keeper, then who?

Written for the dVerse prosery prompt: no more than 144 words of prose including the line “I am bombarded yet I stand”.

good things only #2

I haven’t been writing lately, because it’s marking season and I haven’t had time or head space for anything else. But it’s all done except the late submissions now, so here is an animal edition, for my second good things only:

1. Driving home from school drop-off on Wednesday (campus is still closed although the Canberra lockdown has lifted), with the prospect of another day of nothing but marking, when crossing the road in front of me:

Of course I had to stop and get out and watch it finish crossing the road and trundle off into the bush.

No matter how urgent the marking, there is always time to watch an echidna. Echidnas are egg laying mammals with an electric sense in their nose. How cool is that?