Sunday October 1st, 2023. Snapshots

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.

almost-nightly walk, with little mutt

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.

2000, 27th December (common browns and dragon flies)

The day is ending, let’s go outside,
and watch the sky slip into night
come, hold my hand, I’ll be your guide
as we wander through the fading light.
Around the clearing, the brittle-gums
stand tall in sunset-tinted columns
and honey the air as darkness comes
with massed bouquets of tiny blossom.
And on this stage among the trees
the couples form then float apart
pirouetting in the evening breeze
as from the gullies the night-rise starts.
A hundred maidens flutter by
pursued by a hundred eager swains
against the pale blue evening sky
and take with them the day’s remains.
Their peasant cloaks now drawn in tight
fastened, hiding brighter hues
the dancers leave us for the night
and the stage is put to other use.
So this dance ends, the next begins:
comes darting above the canopy
hunger born on cellophane wings –
hover and strike – how uncannily
their preys’ moves they anticipate.
Large eyes tracking tiny forms
and in a minute they decimate
the terrified and swirling swarms.
But darkness, risen like a tide,
has washed away the last pink light
and all the dancers depart to hide
wherever it is they spend the night.
And we also turn and leave this sight,
retrace our steps and go back inside.

 

My holiday writing project is to complete at least 16 ‘hours’ poems. I wrote a few a couple of years ago, as part of a back and forth with another writer of poems with times as the titles. I always meant to complete a full day but never have, although there are a few from around then on this blog. So this is my re-boot of that project. By the end of the holidays I want to have an April witch sort of poem for each hour from waking to going to sleep. 

I would really love it if anyone else wants to join in and we can link to each other’s ‘hours’ poems. No particular form, and I’m going to try to use several different forms, generally shorter than this.

   

0700 Christmas eve, 2022

0700
and sleep,
not knowing the holidays are here,
left me an hour ago.

two snapshots and three short films

I (1700 to 1730)
White lines flicker by like heartbeats
on a black macadam river.
Hills flow slowly by
beneath an indeterminate sky –
pastel-apricot blends imperceptibly to dove grey,
before the rising blue flood of night.

II (1800)
From the kitchen window the sky is a flower,
pansy-hued:
above the scalloped edge of the ridge
an inch of golden yellow ribbon
trims a blanket of purple velvet
specked with the first few stars.

III (1900)
Above the trees,
whose presence is implied
only by the stars that they hide,
Orion has tipped over sideways –
a fallen statue beside a milky stream.

IV (0530 to 0540)
Against a background of a billion bright dust-motes
a scrap of ice and stone,
heated to incandescence,
inscribe its path on the sky.
Blink and it’s gone, but another,
and another,
follows. Lower down,
four planets have lined up to point out
where the sun will later rise.

V (0640 to 0700)
Light comes before colour:
a white sky seen through a picket-fence of black tree trunks.
Then, a confusion of hues; yellows, greens,
and last night’s apricot now fully ripened.
Then the day washes downwards from the sky,
and the tree trunks are silver against blue.

 

Some explanation of IV: I got up at about 0530 this morning to look at the eta aquariid meteor shower. After trundling up the driveway and out the gate, and down the road a little and not seeing anything (other than the four planets currently in alignment) I decided “sod this, it’s too cold”. As I turned to go back up the hill I finally saw a meteor, so I lay down on the road for a bit and saw six in quick succession.  

And this is what I’ve started to think of a pansy coloured sky:

moon-shadows

tree-shredded moonlight
lies in strips across the path
and drips onto my hair
until, shaking it from me,
it pools on the doormat
where by sunrise it has gone

I’ve resumed my daily walks, but with daylight saving time over my walks are now mostly in the dark.  At least at the moment the moon is near full.

telling stories II: only tell your stories to strangers

Be careful what you turn into words,
and who you give those words to.
You never know what they might do to it –
how they’ll scuff or chip or stain it,
so that it’s never quite bright and clean,
never quite perfect, again.

telling stories I: just words

“I’ll talk it all to pieces if I have to tell about it. Then it’s gone, and when I try to remember what it was really like, I remember only my own story”. Snufkin (‘The Spring Tune’, Tove Jansson)

Let me give you a moment of my time –
a memory,
a story –
all that I saw, heard, felt..
how it was
(well, at least how it was for me)
turned to words, as best I can.

night walks

The trees have sliced the moonlight,
and dropped it
in white strips across the path.
My shadow trails behind me
through this monochrome brightness,
then leads me home
to stand in the doorway
and ask if I want to come in.

mirrors of the soul II

From an angle
I saw,