water

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

 

oeschinensee

 

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

Tower Bridge over the Thames

 

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.