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.

I am not ready for September

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.

bluebells

For the d’Verse quadrille prompt “for whom the bell tolls“:

 

The bluebells are tardy this year.
Although perhaps I misjudge them,
perhaps they are just cautious –
perhaps, having seen the fate of the tulips,
those princesses reduced to muddied rags –
perhaps they are just waiting for the storms to pass.

 

 

Spring’s kiss

For the dVerse prompt “A World of Common Scents“:

For weeks Spring has flirted
teased
with a wink of golden narcissus,
and a coy blue-sky smile
tossed over her shoulder
before she turns and sashays away again
into Winter’s iron-scented grey.
Until now,
finally
she makes her intentions clear
and with soft pink arms reaching out
offers a sweet blossom-perfumed kiss.

Great prompt Worms!

ragged edge

For the dVerse poetics prompt “sometimes August isn’t recognised“:

 

August is uncertain of itself –
a ragged edge between the
winter still in the air and trees,
and the spring pushing up through the ground.
Narcissus and wattle
sweeten and powder the air,
their unexpected bursts of yellow
shocking against the greys and browns
that we have become accustomed to.
We have even forgotten that the skeletal trees
silhouetted against the blue sky
were ever heavy with fruit or leaves,
but we can still imagine the clouds
of blossom they will soon bear.

where did summer go?

The Thursday dVerse “meeting the bar with the Constanza” challenge was to write a series of at least 5 three line stanzas with the rhyme scheme a/b/b, a/c/c, … in which the first lines form a poem in their own right, which is then placed at the end. Oh, and it has to be in iambic tetrameter as well.  Ummm…. okay, here goes:  

 

We watched the summer come and go,
the fields turn green with summer rain,
then gold with ripening of the grain.

Now bright leaves fall from the gingko,
to reds and browns they add their gilt
as autumn lays her patchwork quilt.

Against blue sky, bare branches show
and a half-moon peers through their net
at pigeons roosting in silhouette.

Flocks of autumn carrion crows
scrounge fields now brown and stubble-strewn.
The winter’s chill comes all too soon,

so while we wait for winter’s snow,
we’ll fill the woodshed to its beams
to give us warmth for winter dreams.

Now build the fire, and in its glow
dream of spring and a greening land
and plan the next spring’s plantings, and

ask ourselves, where did summer go?
In just a moment it was past.
But briefly too will winter last.

We watched the summer come and go,
now bright leaves fall from the gingko.
Against blue sky, bare branches show
flocks of autumn carrion crows.
So while we wait for winter’s snow.
build up the fire, and in its glow
ask ourselves, where did summer go?

 

I’ve followed Björn’s  lead in going for a seasonal theme – autumn for us down here in the southern hemisphere. Unfortunately I haven’t taken a photo of the gingko trees on campus which have turned brilliant yellow, but here are the pigeons in silhouette, against a typically blue Canberra winter sky with the moon peeking through the branches. 

boule de neige

I have brought it with me,
down from the hills
where the snow shrouds the ground
between monochrome trees.
I have brought it with me,
down through the fog
that blankets the valley
like a cloud stretched in sleep.
I have brought it with me,
to where snow gives way to grass
beneath technicolour trees
and petals dust the ground.
I have brought it with me
down from the hills
and down through the fog
from winter to spring.
I have brought it with me, for you.
But while I looked for you
it melted away,
melted away to just a cupful of water.
Just a cupful of water,
like any other.

This is for the Tuesday dVerse prompt “naming the rose“, and the challenge is to write a poem titled or using the name of a rose from the list provided. The rose I chose was boule de neige, which means “ball of snow”. It reminded me of a poem I wrote a few years ago when we had a sudden flurry of snow in spring, and I took a cupful of it to work with me for a friend. When I got to work my car still had snow on the roof (because my damn heater didn’t work), and the car I parked next to had blossom petals all over it. My cupful of snow melted in my office before I could pass it on, so I drank it. I’m cheating a bit and posting an edited version of that poem today, as I haven’t posted it before. 

a stutter in the seasons

Summer refuses to depart,
though the sun’s daily arc
now starts well north of east
and ends far short west.
Reluctant to leave,
though the lights are dimmed
she drags out another encore.

And this hesitation confuses:
only half-way to winter
but beneath the soil
barely-rested bulbs
raise their new green spires
like a scattering of uncertain applause
through last season’s still green foliage.

This succession of Indian summers, in which
any colder day seems a transient glitch, is
a stutter in the seasons –
so summer plays again and again.

But the sun cannot be fooled –
he rises and inscribes
an autumnal arc across the sky.

 

Some years ago a friend visiting from Sydney asked “do you get many sunsets here?”, to which I gave the obvious answer “yes, every day”. But I guess they’re more noticeable here – the kitchen window faces west, towards a long ridge, and he was looking out that window at the sunset when he asked. The point along the ridge where the sun sinks changes with the seasons, like a sundial calendar.  So even though it feels like summer at the moment, the point where the sun is going down is well to the north now of where the summer sun sinks. In the southern hemisphere the sun heads north for the winter, not south.  🙂  

mum’s hairdressing salon II

It was 30C and humid here today – and try as I might I couldn’t channel coldness for Frank’s dVerse Haibun Monday prompt, “winter“. Maybe if we had air-conditioning I could have done better. 

 

She carries spring in her step, so what need could she have for its green in her hair? What need, when her hair is yellow-brown as a summer wheat field, and her skin stores the sun and the boundless, cloudless sky is in her eyes?

I offer pink, mauve, blue (roses and lilacs, summer blooms under clear skies).

But no, it has to be green. So, I take the small bottles from my own (winter defying, winter denying?) palette: apple green, electric lime, sweet mint. I twine the colours (tendrils, vines) through the summer of her hair. And in the end it is not so much like spring come to awaken winter fields (as I want to believe it is in my hair), as like rain-wakened ground after the drought ends. As she waits, I do my own.

 

The snow in my hair

will not melt away in spring.

But it holds apples.