tail end (2021)

In these tail-end days –
with the Christmas tree still standing,
but the presents opened and put away,
with the candles fled from the holders
their white wax breathed into ghosts
and a few wax-drops on the floor…
In these tail-end days –
with the fridge full of left-overs,
no piled up washing,
no school-run,
no morning commute
no to do list,
no have-tos…
In these tail-end days
there is, at last, time –
time to reflect,
time to reconsider,
time to tidy away the year,
to record the losses and gains,
and the lessons learnt.

But the blank page mirrors
my blank mind.

0900 Christmas day

The tinsel-scattered glitter
of Christmas-eve candlelight
is dispersed now,
turned to dust by the sunlight,
waiting to be swept up
with the crumpled wrapping-paper
littering the floor.

Outside, a few lazy cicadas are still warming up,
their
click-click-click – buzz… pause (repeat)
like a playing-field sprinkler,
steadies and merges with the background roar
of their thousand more punctual siblings.

tanked (haibun series)

It’s been a really wet year, and relying on tank water as we do it’s frustrating to see the tanks overflowing – all that water we can’t store just running down into the gullies! So having talked about it for months, and with the La Nina starting to fade away, we’ve finally bought another tank.

a tear could attract birds of prey

I’m picking up on a line here from Ngina that really spoke to me “a tear could attract birds of prey”.  Although I’m not actually sure which homonym of tear she meant. 

It is not harsh words
or sad news.
It is unexpected kindness
in the midst of sorrow and cruelty
that tears a sob
gasping from my chest
and pours tears down my face.

Because tears could attract birds of prey –
honed talons spread
obsidian beaks waiting to gorge.
Or worse, carrion crows,
black rag-scraps fluttering and fighting
for a carcass morsel.

It is only in solitude
or in the company of kindness
that tears can be safely released.

 

Things are a bit shit at the moment. My father was recently taken into care because his dementia got so bad he started wandering and getting lost. My mother then had a fall and is now in hospital and doesn’t know where she is. One of my kids hates me and takes every opportunity to tell me how much – and it’s a lot, and he tells me continuously.  And we’re flooded in so I can’t get away from him. And most of my job is dealing with problems – people’s problems and problem people. I’m feeling assailed by negativity on all sides.

So at the campus end of year function today when a colleague thanked me for inspiring him I completely lost it and bawled my eyes out for the next half hour. Lucky it was online so no one could see me.

not now

I shan’t cry now,
not in the glare and noise of the supermarket,
between the breakfast spreads and the cereals.

I mustn’t cry now,
not in front of the children, flown from their school-day,
chattering urgently away, of lessons, games and he-said then I-said.

I can’t cry now,
not when there is no time, no time of my own, just the stove,
the table, and dinner waiting to be cooked and served.

I won’t cry now,
not when I am so tired, that my eyes close before the tears fall,
and there is nothing left of the day, and nothing left in me.

And maybe tomorrow, I wont need to cry.

0500, kookaburras and roosters

I cannot sleep with the window closed anymore.
I am stifled,
drowning in the bathwater-warm,
human-scented air.
Open,
all night a cool breeze drifts gently through the room,
carrying the melancholy sighs of a thousand eucalypts.
But before the sky even begins to lighten
to the silvered-grey hues of the brittlegums,
the kookaburras hurl their song through the window,
shattering my dreams into disconnected shards,
scattering their laughter
like seed-pearls.
Until the roosters add their shrill dissonance
to the raucously hilarious dawn,
compelling me to close the window.
And wonder
if my hatchet
needs sharpening.

fragments I: stones

I
Sun glitters on the ferry’s wake.
Its wash tumbles another cairn,
the clack of the stones
scatters amongst his laughter.

II
“I gave my father a stone,
to hold him here,
to remind him.”
I heard, yet I neglected to do the same.

III
Intricately wound and ornamented shells
shatter among rough glass and smooth stones.
Littoral becomes pocket kipple,
soon-forgotten, scattered and lost.

IV
The sharp edge planes the surface,
raising a glittering curtain, falling
as the stone skips onward.

 

Collected for the dVerse MTB prompt “picking up some pieces” – gathered partly from an old poem, with some new shards to form a fragment poem.

Tonomura tango

For the dVerse prompt “This one’s for you Bjorn“, set by Lilian in honour of Bjorn who is a (fellow) physicist, and requiring the use of a line from ABBA’s “dancing queen”.

So, here is a little nerdity for Bjorn:

 

Each double slit’s a sliding door,
to a strand within the multiverse, or…
Can’t decide, and no one’s looking?
Go through both, you’ll have them cooking,
up a theory on how you danced
through those doors – by choice or chance?
Do you expose a God’s immorality
with your fluttering waves of probability?
We’ve counters, film and CCD,
you think we’re blind, but you’ve been seen –
though you’re a teaser, you turn em on,
you sneaky little el-ec-tron.