scented notes

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

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.

Sutton bonfire night 2023, snapshots

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.

Good things only #5: last week’s highlights

It’s been a long time since I’ve written a “good things only” post. But last week had a few highlights I wanted to record.

On Thursday on my evening walk I noticed a bat hanging on the top strand of the barbed-wire fence. One prong of wire had gone through a wing and it was pretty well stuck. I thought it was dead, especially given it had been a really hot day and it must have been there since the previous night.  But when I started trying to get it loose, thinking I’d take it home for the kids to see, it turned its head and opened its mouth at me. I managed to get it loose and took it back to the house where it had a drink of water from an egg cup before flying away. I’d never held a bat before, or even seen one that close up. It was such a tiny, beautiful creature.

 

Then on Friday I got an unusual compliment. I think it was a compliment, anyway. As I was coming out of my office, someone knocking on the next door said “I like you hair! It’s the same colour as the undercoat on the F-35”. Which says something about my workplace… it may be frustrating to the point of infuriating at times, but it’s generally interesting at least.

Sunday was the Goulburn poultry auction. What more need be said? What could more exciting than that?  Even if none of the birds I bought can fly.  😀

bovinaphobia

Ginger-mutt growls at the thunder, 
is unphased by fireworks.
He is the fiercest hunter
unafraid of whatever lurks
in the undergrowth. He laughs
at the rooster’s spurs and beak,
but at the sight of the little calf
the bold cattle dog just freaks.

 

Written for the dVerse Monday Quadrille prompt “Bold-ly go” – 44 words including ‘bold’ – about our red heeler cattle dog who is scared of cows. The calf kept following him and he kept hiding behind T1. He’s also scared of llamas, but that’s just sensible. 

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.

   

bluebells and bell-grass, haibun

December, and the first month of summer is upon us. Walking up the hill is an effort now in the heat. But I stay on the road in the sun, where any snakes are easier to see, rather than walk in the long dry grass or the leaflitter under the trees.

cicadas, at last

I wanted to write something for the dVerse last line prompt, “in my end is my beginning“, but when I sat down to try to gather my last lines together I found I’d hardly written anything during November, or even the second half of this year. So instead I just grabbed a recent last line and used that as a starting point. Hence I haven’t joined the mr linky links, but have provided the link to the prompt (above).  

 

perhaps they were just waiting for the storms to pass
before climbing from the cool earth
to sprinkle summer in great handfuls from the trees,
peppering the air with their tick-tick-tick
their buzz the simmering of the blue sky
that flows down, pouring between the trees
to the dry ochre ground

under a lilly-pilly moon

 Under the blood moon

…no, that’s wrong,

after the flood, chainsaws

After the flood
when the hiluxes have been dragged from the gullies
and the roads are cleared and open in town,
when the water is mopped from living rooms
and the ‘roos are drying along the roadsides
when the sheep are washed white as cotton wool
and the cockatoos are muddy as street urchins
when the gum-leaves glitter in the afternoon sun
and the water has fallen so that we can stride into the creek –
then
while the three-legged dog watches
(though we are hardly drovers’ wives),
we take our chainsaws,
and we clear the path
home.

We got 80mm of rain in a few hours Thursday-week ago, which might not sound like a huge amount but with all the rain we’ve had recently the soil is saturated, the dams are full and there was nowhere for it to go. My neighbour was sending me texts on her way (trying to get) home of closed roads, vehicles large and small washed off and people being rescued. We live at the end of a dirt road past a creek crossing that floods a few times a year – and this time it was not only flooded, a tree had washed across it. She couldn’t get across until morning, when she waded across to where her three-legged dog was sitting in the cold waiting for her. I was home, but my family had stayed in Canberra to avoid the floods.  In the afternoon, when the water had dropped enough, we each took a chainsaw and cleared the tree together.  In the photo above you can see the “tide-line” just in front of the vehicle (well above the mud-line) where the water got to.  Today we got another 40mm of rain, and it flooded again but nowhere near as high.