Pausing in contemplation
before a stack of most admirable pumpkins –
gently ribbed in
yellow-streaked deep forest green –
a trolley stops beside mine,
and a woman says “pumpkin soup”.
We both nod, and stand
admiring these exemplary pumpkins.
I add “and pumpkin scones”,
she adds “and pumpkin kaya”.
We exchange pumpkin lore.
Then each choose a pumpkin,
and go on our way.
Today, making pumpkin kaya,
I wonder if she is making pumpkin scones.
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Monday
Butterfly season
clouds of common browns rise from the leaflitter
swirling through the summer-holiday scented air
Tuesday
The overwhelming complexity of city air:
hot concrete scented steam rising from the pavement
mingles with traffic fumes, jasmine, pine mulch and exotic dinners
Wednesday
Rain, rain, and again rain:
the satisfying scent of brown water as it overspills creek and dam
overlaid with the clean breath of eucalyptus
Thursday
wet leaves glint
in the fresh-washed sunlight, the air smells blue
and a snippet of rainbow hangs in the clouds
Friday
butterflies again,
brown wings slowly beating, as they sip sweetness from the
scraggly roadside Sifton bush
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0700
Daylight savings crept in and stole an hour.
0600, 0700, whatever. The house is cool and quiet,
red pens and a pile of papers wait on the kitchen table.
Never look at the names before marking.
But red crosses slashed against random equations
says I know these were the back-row boys.
0900
Little Muttmutt monsters the pig,
nipping her heels and ears
a yapping David to her Goliath.
Balance the hens waterers under the tap,
they will need them all full today.
9 eggs by 9am – they get their work done early too.
1100
Warm milk, sugar and yeast,
cinnamon and cloves –
their promise fills the air.
Stretched and folded a hundred times,
the flesh-warm dough rests
slowly swelling in the tins.
1500
First of October and already the first cicadas.
A few clicks like a sprinkler starting
then they inundate the bush.
The wind whips up the dust
and a willy-willy crosses the road in front of us,
and disappears at the edge.
At the creek we skim stones across brown water
under a condensed blue sky.
The little one wades in to retrieve the best stones.
1700
NJ waves from the cow shed.
I leave a dozen eggs and a loaf in her kitchen,
little Muttmutt tussles with his buddies.
Back up the hill into a hot headwind.
We push through a wall of cicada-roar
into the eucalypt shade.
2100
Little Muttmutt swears at the darkness,
running back and forth yelling
faaark faark faaark.
Bunyips and the like scared off
he claims his dentastick
and curls up on his bed.
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For the dVerse prompt “take a walk with me“.
I am feeling hostile,
so I don’t ask if anyone wants to come.
Apart from the little mutt of course,
who doesn’t need to be asked
but leaps around me joyously
as soon as I get my shoes.
Outside the sky is hearts-ease hued;
deepening purple over a yellow glow,
so fitting for early spring –
mirroring the small faces shyly peeking up at the daffodils.
There is still enough light to see the shapes of trees
and I watch the little mutt race ahead up the hill
not noticing that I have turned the other way.
Eventually he will realise, and come racing back.
The sound of our footsteps changes,
from soft padding on the bitumen –
the only sealed bit for 10km around –
to the crunch of gravel.
A plane rumbles overhead
on the Canberra to Sydney route.
The scent changes from dusty-sweet wattle
to horse paddock –
saffron scent of hay
to cow manure – warm and pungent.
We are barely through the gate
before the barking starts.
Little mutt races to meet his friend
a lolloping long-haired blond,
smarter than he looks, but still recovering
from the trauma of an electrified cage.
They leap about one another,
all teeth and hair and wagging tails.
N_ waits at the house, her old dog standing guard.
He is now the three-legged patriarch of the pack
and growls at the bouncing youngsters
who are left outside to cavort.
I rarely leave or arrive empty handed –
on this visit I bring dinner
and leave with milk, barely cooled,
and cheese and home-cured olives.
I promise to bring a load of wood,
as winter is coming back for a brief spell.
Full dark by the time gossip is exchanged,
and I take my leave,
calling the little mutt away from his friend.
All three dogs are rescues.
Maybe N_ and I are too.
Maybe everyone is.
The air is cold now, and smells of wet grass
although there has been no rain.
Back up the hill, serenaded by a thousand frogs,
with the milky way stretched above me,
north to south,
with the southern cross at one end.
The milk bottle digs into my hand
but it is too cold now for it to hurt.
We reach the gate,
and there is the familiar jangle as I latch it,
little mutt scooching through
although he could just as easily go underneath.
And there through the trees
are the lights of home.
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For the dVerse prompt “August transitions‘:
I am not ready for September,
for another Spring.
I would be satisfied to stay curled into myself,
fat and white as a cockchafer
burrowed into the soil
and sleeping snug in the earth,
inhaling only the exhalations of decay,
of the slow composting of last season’s growth.
Surely it is too soon for Spring,
for blossom scent and the lengthening of days
and the bursting forth of new life?
I am not ready.
But somehow August is half done.
The wattles are shouting
their golden threats of spring
and even the photocopier
meeps for more paper like a baby bird.
I am not ready to leave the snug of winter.
I am not ready for another Spring.
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For the dVerse Monday quadrille prompt “pouring out our poems“. A quadrille is exactly 44 words, and for this prompt had to contain the word water.
Remember when the drought broke?
How we followed the gully
down from the house to the waterfall place
overflowing with the laughter, relief –
the dry years’ strain and restraint
discarded with our clothes
in the recklessness of water,
the profligacy of the flood?
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Down by the edge of the stream, my son looks for stones
to put in our pockets and, when forgotten, to
be found again and tumbled – rolled in our hands like
the water rolls them here, in this mountain stream.
I point to one that I like, matt grey and rounded
as a miniature boulder, he brings it to me
where I wait on the pathway, then clambers back down
to choose a stone for himself, and send it skipping.
For the dVerse prompt “MTB Rocking the Imayo“, which Laura explain as:
“–The Imayo* – and this is its structure:
The prompt also required the poem to be about a stone or rock, and a literal one – no metaphors!
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Some mornings, when it has been cold enough but not terribly so, and maybe there was rain that left the windscreen wet, the ice is just an opaque sheet. When the sun hits it, it is glowing and opalescent from inside the car, but mostly just a nuisance to be scraped or melted off as quickly as possible.
But when the conditions are just right, truly bitterly cold so the ice grows quickly, it takes a dendritic form: frost ferns. Molecules of water from the atmosphere link up, positive attracted to negative, quickly quickly now, no time to settle into a tidy close-packed stack.
This simple little molecule, just three atoms, but all these local minima in its energy landscape – in each of which is a different crystal form, like surprises in the pockets of an advent calendar. And inside the car this morning is like being inside a Christmas decoration. And oh, the glitter when the sun hits it as we start up the driveway, navigating by memory until the sun and the heater melted them away.
atom by atom
each finding its place
frost ferns grow
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An apricot-satin ribbon of sky
inscribed with skeletal trees
slips below the horizon
as white lines catch the headlights,
flick flick flick
tachycardia fast. Continue reading
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For the dVerse prompt “what colour is hope“, to write a poem about 3 things that make you happy:
Hope is blue –
the blue of sky
mirrored in every puddle,
and in every full dam
when the drought has broken.
Hope is russet brown –
the brown-paper skin
on a tulip bulb
ready to be nestled
into rich black soil.
Hope is yellow –
the yellow of the leaping flames
of this sympathetic magic
with which we call back the sun
on this shortest day of the year.
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anotherKate 