birdtrack
skythreat
heartcrack
the wave swirls upwards
to greet me
I swear it knows
what i need
wish it would tell me
out loud
waterwords
are hard to read
Photo: Claire Doble
Waterwords
water
Slipstream
there’s a rush, a wash
and I’m freefalling
can’t hold on to thoughts
not supposed to
what do I grab?
nothing
to do
don’t think this or
don’t think that
too much landing
on my mat
let it go, the next right thing
slipstream
could be lethal
how does it end
let alone begin
Photo: Claire Doble
Stormwater
Stormwater makes gutters exciting
clear and fast and rush, rush, rushing
sticks and leaves and grass and concrete
fresh puddles are new lakes
around a drowned playground
the waves offshore huge and brown
with denuded earth from headlands
floating and crashing
flying to shore
soft and high like Tara Brach’s hair
rain, rain, rain for days makes mirrors
everywhere
then it drains like snow disappears
and you wonder
what happened to all that extra stuff
the world absorbs
enfolding elements, renewed
and we observe only
an iceberg-tip of all
Photo: flooded forest by Claire Doble
Wow, it has been more than a month since I last posted, that is a long time for me. I have felt a bit flat and non-poetic lately I guess. I hope this changes!
Christmas eve
bushfire smoke
sits in pits
of lungs flown
far away
the fight
still fluttering
ragged
animal fear
resides
human organs
overlaid
by today’s
hotgreen grass-smell
of primary school T-ball
in Lynden Park
can’t tell sometimes
sweat from tears from dew from bore water from
precious reservoir
can it be spared?
Saved?
Me? I am free
on knees
taller than trees:
to all of thee
Christmas merry x
Photo: Claire Doble
Two minutes to midnight
The night air is full of the sea
and it pours, thick
through the kitchen flyscreen
as poignant-melancholy music
rises to meet it like a wave
and I contemplate never drinking again
Watch Greta Thunberg on TV
fist-bump Obama and then
make an impassioned plea
her hair grown to Rapunzel length
that means
it’s been at least a year, please let her win
As the rain falls helpless, heavy here
in parched fields beyond
farmers cry drought-tears
and I see broken, unfixed water pipes
beside the train line I’m overwhelmed
by how little we care
Image: Pacifica Australis #3 – Tiger Nautilus Shell by Christopher Diaz (sculptures at Killalea). Photo: Claire Doble
these waves
these waves
stacked like trays
in the corner of Vinnes
a mess of levels
all over the place
and whoever said
liquid is flat
a plane of rock
like a jewellery box
glory spots, lots of treasure pools
the smooth grace of sea
draws up her skirt
gathers into a bastion
of Prussian blue and
as wind stipples the topfoam
back in a cockatoo crest
and the rest
tips forward
crashes on and over
those uneven shelves, the
cutlery drawer
of my coastal shore.
elephant-hide stone, I hop
from plane to plane and feel
brave
like the water could
engulf me
at any stage but of course
I’m safe
not near enough the edge
prefer to watch
put my mind
in the boiling blueturquoisewhite
cauldron and thrill
to the thought of
how I’d die, cold and afraid
while a cormorant
slips oilsmooth
quicksilver, alive in the place
that would surely be
my grave
Photo: Claire Doble
Finally recorded one!
Link: https://soundcloud.com/user-808707280/these-waves
Liquid love
If you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot bear it, that is a door
life flowing cleargreenblue at the bottom of oyster-encrusted steps
clean water, the salt tang, the ripple against stone, how the light strikes
a big sky over a railroad track and the way beer disappears with the sunset
aching sweet, being drunk feels like love
we twist our affections around a glass and tip whiskey in the crevices love has eroded and cut
sluicing the jagged bits, juicing over hurt
the intense blue sky, blue like plastic, a blue dome, a blue tarpaulin from the 80s, blue like sky, a perfect cloudbroken blue over a back lane in Adelaide
ground tinted rust-red from bore water, the world’s blood and corrugated iron in the sun smells like dirt
your eyes like a tannin creek, running smooth and alive with the promise
if I pour myself full of wine from the grapes of the sky, salted from the sea, grown against wire fences in a red-brown earth
if I lie down with you and join our mouths our rivers our waves
will I be granted love
or does it just feel that way
I took the first line of this from Women Who Run With The Wolves by Dr Clarissa Pinkola Estes.
Photo: Claire Doble
The Caged Lake
trapped behind bars
and rooms with candelabras
watched over by stone lions
hemmed by iron pylons
you laugh a liquid chuckle
claim your sovereignty
in droplets
human greed encroaches
puts you in a bottle
still you slide away
you are me, you say
I’ll destroy your structures
by the molecule
as you build them
I erode
froth, ozone, fog and puddle
cage me if you wish
I’m the undertow
the overthrow
and more
in every pore
you know
the score
I wanted to use this line ‘the undertow and the overthrow’ since reading it in a poem by Aurora Phoenix, it seemed to fit here on a poem musing about Lake Geneva, how it’s so big and yet people seek to own it and/or make private property of it. How can we own nature? Water is part of us. And yet clean water is a privilege and a commodity. Not sure I entirely captured it (!) but need a few poems to break up the ‘cantons’ …
Photo: the fence of a chateau on Lake Geneva (snapped by me!)
The black in your blue
Blue mountain water
Black-backed like lead paint or
Ash in the sky
An old school-desk painted over many times
A clean sort of grime
Watercolour liquid, semi-opaque
The silt of millennia
Ancient clues in aqueous solution
We splash like young fools
As the earth revolves
Cradled in the bowl
of a mountain so old
Our tiny joy
A fleck against
All ecstasy and angst.
The black in your blue
I know it’s me too
The picture he gave me
Words that came through
Firefly times
All our past lives
Constantly strive
Never-forever… abides
Oh my narrow-wide mind
an always-restless bride
Reflected in
My blue-black eyes
About A River
The Thames
Just is
As inevitable as umbrellas in London
Weighted down by warships
Pinned back
by buildings and monuments
To the past
And glittering present
Tidal but flowing ever onwards
Sectioned by bridges
The powerful, and delicate
All swept by greenbrown tides
I tried to make you mine
The Pool of London
Familiar but unknowable
Not like the sky over Newtown…
But I was rushing
And you were indifferent – so strong
And yet irresistible
Not pretty water
Like Sydney Harbour or the Zurichsee, but…
Compelling, unfathomable, there
Turner’s Thames too
Shimmering on the periphery
OK maybe a few drops
Seeped into my soul
Absorbed from a thousand cups of English tea.
clairevetica 