Selected poems
Bill's funeral (April Second)
Here's a day to rememberA bloke strongly dramaticKeeping himself brain-aliveThrough intense musingOn Word and Words
For many yearsOn the edge of dyingSo often pulling backFrom the edgeTo be idiosyncratically alive— Again
One of thoseWonderfully eccentricOld Dancers with the HolyFor whom there is alwaysSomething newTo pounce on and make your own
And now he's gone!
Leaving his books
Leaving his conglomerationOf uniquely gathered things
Leaving an immensity of stories
Leaving those womenWho kept him very much alive
Travel well Bill — Oldmate!
The crane
Aerodynamically poisedastutely observing the airflow on this grey and gusty morningsee the crane poetically committed gliding near stall-speedproviding just enough momentum for the chosen task
Is this venturous water bird specifically intending to land on THAT power-line?
YES and landing has taken place!
Now continues the pushing of boundaries
With a body well-developed for flyingexquisitely-placed for living in wet-landsbut questionably proportionedwhen it comes to landing on high-wires oscillating in the wind
Following several seconds of erratic flapping and ungainly wobblesgenerations of evolutionary conditioning made the necessary decision and the crane made its exitlaunching into the wind with consummate easeloping the skiestowards the next parcel of user-friendly habitat
Twenty seconds ungainly balancing on power-linescan be seen as failurebut what a step of imagination!
A few hot days in the Flinders Ranges
Have you ever noticed the way that book and reality sometimes entwineand become essentially one?
It's happening here and nowas we contemplate these fewhot days in Hawker and the Flinders
Anita Desai's The Zigzag Waycreates a context for living hereat this particular ephemeral moment
Altiplano Mexico in all it's barren frugalityintegrates with these hot and marginal plainshemmed in by the cragginess of surrounding scarplandswith their many — strong — stories
Desai's people, seeking their story-rootsliving their Demi-Hellsinvade my dark dreams in the sleepof half awake early morningsand are carried into a daythat seems to be livedonly marginally in touch with this everyday world
The discordant nasal-voiceof the one left standing Prime Ministerearlier on the ABC Brekky Programme and the insistence of a nearby bob-catremains the dialectical antithesisto what this day is and may bring
Of trees and the gift of healing
There are times When a soul-wearinessCan find a root-healingIn that quietness of treesWho recognise in their ownDeeply-shared interflowing The ability to live through A remembrance of burningOffering in such a presenceA decisive awarenessThat there is more To an enduring lifeCentered and resilient Than a stoic endurance And the chaos of mere survival
Here on the Outlook TrackHere above the Mountain HighwayHere amidst this fire-scarred Experience of Stringy-BarksSuch a