Selected poems
Climactic Events in Royal Park
First Lockdown
These weekday mornings all is quiet.
I stroll across the highway,
a piddle of cars in the outbound lane,
a puddle at the distant lights.
Along the parkland trail
cowled figures walk alone,
measuring their distance.
From the rise above the railway cutting
Macedon stands burly in the smoke-free air.
‘Six days shall you labour
but on the seventh day you shall rest’,
said Moses.
But now on six days few can labour,
grind corn, or pay their debts.
Every day brings death and exile,
lack of bread, and isolation.
After sunrise
of this seven-day, upside-down shabbat
the crimson glow out in the East
reflected on the redgum trunks
makes do for candle lights,
and the wind upon my face
intones Shalom Aleichem.
As I walk across deserted playing fields,
between grass parrots and galahs,
both grazing,
a swoop of swallows
dance about my non-observant feet
chirruping the Havdalah.
Presidential Election
This morning a million words on Trump,
but nothing special happened here.
The sun fell on eucalypts and far off Macedon,
fallen gum leaves sparked like silver coins,
spring grass was lambswool underfoot,
the liquid call of a grey thrush sweetened the gully,
a murder of crows ground the air,
three red mowers spun like dodgem cars
between the trees,
two pigeons, tails fanned like geisha girls,
danced together,
mother duck and her eight ducklings
played by the ornamental lake.
No, nothing special happened here.
Christmas after Lockdown
A dark morning, damp path, dull spirits,
and the smell of recent rain.
Along the rise, yellow light
seeps through the circling trees
and pours through gaps,
falling on the redgums,
and glinting off the rain drops on each leaf.
The whole wide world’s alive with stars
and the smell of earth and eucalypt,
as once in Bethlehem
when shepherds clumped down from the rise
and wondered at the child
who lay in golden light,
surrounded by a thousand stars,
as kings came bringing gifts
and, embarrassed,
laid aside their heavy gold.
The Fall of Kabul
Above the hockey stadium,
the morning sky is scarlet,
like a fire.
I think of you
as you await the coming of the Taliban.
Over the stadium hang banks of blinding globes,
as once within the Estado Nacional in Chile,
under Pinochet,
and still on Manus Island
where many of your brothers are confined.
To the north the sky hangs heavy grey
like security police en masse,
and to the west,
a rainbow buttresses the sky.
An emblem of our care for you,
it slowly fades away.
And now a cold hard rain sets in,
weeping.
Grand Final
‘We’ve won’,
the Siren blared last night,
as sixty years of inner demons were expelled,
a hundred thousand arthritic knees creaked up,
fifty thousand long-unpractised fists attacked the sky,
and croaking voices