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.

Sutton bonfire night

Flames rise, pouring sparks upwards –
red specks flickering
among the billion bright
diamond points
of a black winter sky.

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.

nightrise

Dusk is rising from the gullies,
gathering beneath the trees
lifting the last light up their trunks,
ripening it from gold to rose as it climbs.

To the east, the blue earth-shadow
like a distant sea overflowing the hills
slowly merges into the deepening sky.

To the west, the sun drops below the ridge,
the last day-light staining the clouds.

Stars appear in the indigo depths.

 

I am trying to walk every evening for at least half an hour, so I’m seeing a lot of sunsets at the moment (and hence also the high fraction of evening poems on the blog at the moment). And it’s occurred to me that night does not fall, at least not in the bush – it rises, flowing up from the valleys and gullies. It’s day that falls from the sky. 

The photo is from this evening’s walk, looking west. I should have taken one to the east as well – maybe tomorrow.  

Linking to dVerse OLN, I’m sorry to miss another live one… maybe next time I will set the alarm to join in, I just need to figure out the time difference.  

evening soundscape

The cicadas are resting now
(though surely they cannot sleep
through the row of the crickets –

a grunt in the night

What monster is this
that lurks in the night?
It thumps at the door,
and peers in at the light.
With great radar ears
and wet snuffly snout

darkness flows uphill

Night rises from the bottom of the valley,
sending darkness creeping,
quietly,
up the gullies,
its progress marked,
mournfully,
by the currawongs.

Darkness flows uphill,
like the opposite of the water
that,
along with the sky,
still holds the last of the day,
for us to take a final sip from.

 

2300, still 30C / back of the envelope

dragged from sleep by the heat,
the still air drowning me,

one on r-squared

Proximity trumps everything.
How else can a ball of grey basalt
outshine the stars?