Poems

Land Lord

Glyni Cumming

Acorns passed.
The great southern land broke free from its moorings and
slowly ground its way north.
Tectonic plates crashed.
Crushed rocks, molten, burst through in flaming fumaroles.
Lush rainforests flourished and died on the rims of ancient
volcanoes.
Stone mountains cracked by sun and rain into shards of rock
and slate, splintering down into deep azure ocean, where salty
tears yielded to the softer call of tidal ebb and flow.

Like the north, the southern land lay waiting to be mastered,
By an etruscan lord, a Delphic high priest, a Roman imperor
or a Norman king who would mount the virgin hills and
enforce submission with ramparts and stone walls.
But none came.
Here only the natural order, green garmented trees rooted in
the dark earth.
Now, like lean-limbed tremulous acolytes, wraith-white in the
rising moon, they supplicate to the dominion of the beautiful
white house standing solitary on the hill crest.
Yes its transparent glass facades, unlidded, are eyeless,
reflecting only the aspirations of sky and sunlit silence.
This land has no master - more, (bit even less), a care taker.

Each And Every Year

Patricia Raynor

There is a slight tree
which, withering delights me.

Slim-leafed, dark-greened till June
only when it petals seeds, makes belief
it flowers, overlooked by the great eucalypts.

Each and every year, here and there, not everywhere
it lights the path, it signals, flimsy-flutters,
blossoms seeds sheathed-sheer, the palest irridescent green.

Its brilliance belongs to any summer, autumn, winter, spring
and surprising me - tries my vocabulary - far outshines.

Jigsaw Dance

Claire Ryan

An urban city sprawl
Wears yellowed news
Trailing street lamps.
Its garbage dips and rolls
In grave meanderings
Down concrete lanes.

Bursts of frangipani
Overtake a guard rail
I breathe in freedom
With its scented nature.
It colours well
This modern city gloom.

Above dry ochre plains I soar
To revere some amber sphinx sunning,
And sacred caves aglow...
Striped tapestries of sandstone shelter,
Where turtles, fish and lizards
Live indelibly on.

Along the gulf's lonely northern reaches
Where telegraph lines first stretch and hum,
Wetland streams now swell and gather,
As trees explode
With flapping wings of magpie geese,
And nature's rich seeds burst and bloom.

The wet well breaks and dry returns
To suckle moisture,
And rearrange life's order,
With moonscapes of hard glitter clay,
'Midst trails of feral pig and scraggy spinifex
Powdered red in bull dust.

Eastern seas bewitch, as great perennial Edens,
their sapphire waters and emerald shadows of mosaic coral
Stud ivory sanded islands.
And western mountain ranges rise,
Like huge, leafy humpbacked whales
Among canopies of scrub and rainforest.

As glass and concrete block and roll
Towards the lemon-scented gums,
I wait for red light change...
In peak hour tangle.
While outback forms of stone and soil
Still weather on to wilder colour,
In one of nature's jigsaw dances.

Portrait Of The Absent Artist

Kristin Hanaford

For Dell Nash

I had imagined our fusion of minds
as synchronous function

a conjoined twin
visioning the landscape

or the fall of her hair,
capturing light as it rips open day.

Spending hours fussing over photographs
abstract memories, yours or mine

I wouldn't have minded
arguing over influences, or what colour

would best suggest blood or bloom.
We could have compared our working habits -

the best room in the house, whether or not
you are left handed, right brained or prefer to work at night.

Instead, my artist painter twin, this shadow poem
scatters words left here as contract,

images still evolving. This portrait,
as the best and most difficult of poems and paintings,

left as a work in progress,
incomplete

shapes divined in watercolour,
perpetually arriving and suggestive.