walk of shame

Naughty wombat
been up all night,
look where you’re at
in broad daylight!
You’ve none to blame.
This walk of shame
is all your fault.

 

 

Wombats are nocturnal, so I was surprised to see this one crossing the road at about 0800 recently. I think it must have been visiting at the nearby wombat sanctuary.

morning commute: stream of consciousness

For the dVerse Monday quadrille prompt “stream“:

Dirt and ‘roos -> gravel -> tarmac, one lane -> two lanes -> white lines -> more lanes, highway barricades.
Trees -> fields -> farms -> villages -> outskirts -> suburbs -> cement-grey city towers.
Farm utes -> dusty wagons -> soccer-mums’ four-wheel drives -> city-cars – shiny bubbles of banality on wheels…
all of us joining the stream

morning commute II

A somewhat late response to the dVerse Tuesday prompt “Blue Tuesday”. Work’s been busy lately, lots of deadlines looming, lots of meetings, lots of things to “operationalize” (how do you do a vomiting emoji in WordPress???)…  So I’m hiding in my office with the door closed and the light off, typing as quietly as I can to preserve a bit of the blue sky of home before I have to actualize somebody’s roadmap or elevate some excellence.  But Teams just pinged me a “join meeting” so this will have to do:

I have come down from the hills,
where spider webs glitter with frost,
where currawongs call greetings,
where kangaroos nod as I pass,
and where the sky is saturated with blue,
a blue that pours down, over me,
into me, filling and overflowing.

no loose ‘roos in here

This is for d’Verse’s Haibun Monday: The present moment. I got into the office, opened my email, my calendar, my magic pudding TO DO list, and then… though I knew I oughtn’t… checked the Monday dVerse prompt.

 

H_ opens the gate at the top of the driveway, swinging on it the last 45 degrees, though I always tell her not to. She gets back in and we barrel on down the hill. A flock of cockatoos, white against a blue sky, swoops across the road in front of me to land in a paddock among the ‘roos. “Got a ‘roo loose in the top paddock” I say, but H_ doesn’t get the joke, yet.
We lurch and bounce over potholes and gullies, until dirt gives way to gravel, gives way to bitumen and we admire the autumn colours as we trundle into the village – claret ash, golden ash, scarlet pin oak, Chinese pistachio and liquidambar… even the names speak of flames, of flaring vivid transience, of an excitability beyond tulips.
A quick hug, an “I love you, have a good day” and H_ is running for the school gate and I am heading for the highway, the parkway, past the airport where a jet roars overhead, white as a cockatoo in the sun, packed with pollies heading for Sydney. Traffic lights, merging lanes, security gate, carpark, swipe card entry so my presence is known, my whereabouts tracked. Down corridors where crimsons have been safely ritalined into placid rose, all verdant greens safely, sagely, Valium-dulled (although I think the ceiling is giving me separation anxiety).

Don’t swing on the gate,
it could come unhinged – we don’t
want ‘roos loose in here.

flood moon; toad; morning commute, still

The Tuesday dVerse prompt this week was “flipping meanings“:

Flood moon

The round orb,
washed white by rain,
floats high in the stream.
It is a record
of what has been.
It asks a question
about what was lost.

Original:
Bushfire Moon (April 2020)

A thin crescent,
bloodied by smoke,
hangs low above the ridge.
This is not a portent
of things to come.
It is a statement,
of what is here.

crayons

For the d’Verse Haibun Monday prompt “Walk with me down memory lane”, but instead of a walk, I took a drive down memory lane.

“use your morning commute time for self-care”

Muttado’s ha’sonnet “an opening” reminded me of this poem I wrote one morning some months ago. Early on in the pandemic when we were told to work from home, and everyone was very stressed, we were given the advice to “use your morning commute time for self-care”…. yeah, that worked.

Dragged untimely
from my womb-warm tub,
by the phone’s persistence,
the phone’s insistence,

morning commute

Frost coated fields
in glittering white
give way
to the dull grey
of the city,
huddled beneath
its brown winter cloak.

 

morning haiku I

The windchime clatters,
thunder growls around the house –
winter come prowling.

The morning commute:
(hooray for isolation!)
bring laptop to bed.

Thanks Vixen of Verse, for the inspiration!   

Buttercups

The lane ends,
the traffic stops.
And I see:
buttercups!
Perfect, glossy yellow,
rising from the
damp dark green.

I could get out,
and sit with the buttercups
and watch the cars pass.

But the traffic moves,
and before the thought
can become the act,
I am following again.