Thanks to Miss Howell, my English teacher, who said I had a flair for composition. And Mr Barbour, my Latin teacher, who cuffed me, Use English! The word you want is ‘bold’. And thanks to a, perhaps tired, 1965 Leaving Certificate examiner who, unaccountably, passed my essay about reading a tomato sauce label. In some small measure, they’re all responsible for what followed.
An apprenticeship taught me about ‘flat’ and ‘smooth’ and ‘square’ and ‘round’ – ideas that, in the physical world, are all just out of reach. The Air Force brought me order and disciplined, yet alternative, thinking. Today I prefer to write poetry – accessible poetry. My writing time is balanced by the demands of house renovations, conservation, desert driving and occasional photography. |
Gods Like Greed You came and took by force and fraud. Our land and life and peace you seized. And long your gods of greed applaud your gentle push, and ways you warred that forced a people to their knees. You came and took by force and fraud. For those displaced there’s no reward. ‘A dog’ you say, ‘must have its fleas.’ And long your gods of greed applaud. ‘It’s fair - there’s wealth for all,’ Greed cawed and smiled on those it will not please. You came and took by force and fraud the bowers and peace, those smiles so broad, the wandering creeks and weeping trees. And long your gods of greed applaud. And still you smell a piece of cheese and rat-like claw at more to seize. You came and took by force and fraud and long your gods of greed applaud. ============= 'Coming Home' was inspired by a Max Dupain photograph of a drover with sheep below the Mograni Range near Gloucester. Coming Home I ride the homebound track With the sheep ahead and quiet And this song of love forever on my mind Seeing mighty cedar trees Tamarind and turpentine Standing tall, their branches intertwined Dripping dew on mosses soft Silent on the slopes Waving on the ridges high above So I smile for I’m in love It’s deep within my soul It’s what I cling to when I’m distant for a time And I’m camping for tonight Under pine and tallowwood By a stream that wanders off into the mist As twilight starts its song The shadows merge to one The trills of night seem ever to persist And, again, you ask me ‘why?’ Why I saddle near sunrise While the campfire’s warmth suggests a longer stay The morning sun will warm my way As I ride through glittering frost That’s what you’ll cling to when you’re distant for a time But you’ll never reconcile The contradictions that abound How anyone could break up this for buried coal And you’ll sing it to the birds That we’re already rich There’s something here that feeds your heart and soul And at your very feet The blue wren stops its call And a fantail hovers close to hear your mind And the Gloucester River winds ‘Round that swing of trees and hills That’s what you’ll cling to when you’re distant for a time These riches beyond dreams Are riches we can reach I can drink them, you can hold them, you and me And even if you don’t Make the call on it today It surely waits when you’ve decided that you’re free When you slow down for a while When you let that clutter go You’ll find my Gloucester where the yellow grasses sway And you’ll grin like me, today When you top the Mograni For the love that calls is never far away. Yes, I smile for I’m in love It’s deep within my soul It’s what I cling to when I’m distant for a time. ================= The bush has friends to greet him... Sweet Secrets - The Banksia Amazing ‘bottle brush’ flower. Always vertical, it pushes against obstacles to keep its flower upright. For a short period in Spring its flower is orange almost red – and the nectar runs. The morning dew - or perhaps it is straight nectar - collects in the cool of the night and, in the morning before sunrise, it runs. Yes runs, and slips through this spiralled inner ladder. Fine horizontal pistils form the ladder. They slow each drop, relieve it of some of its mass and the drop again slows and waits suspended in this tension between its source and the almost silent sputter. Slow, imperceptible gathering, followed by release and stop. Stems black and wet as the run continues – or a larger drop wells and dangles waiting the more direct route as mass and gravity decide. But stop. Break this certainty. Finger that single drop. It glistens in the early light. Taste it. Sweet… pungent… heady. I want more. I want to drink it, really drink savour, hold, sniff. Ahhh, eyes closed… let the senses run. Hooked! Run back to camp. Yes, run! Take your cup, pannikin... whatever you can quickly find and search with the bees and birds. They know. This is nectar. But don’t collect it drop by drop. No… on each flower there are perhaps forty drops all caught in this delicate balance. Each waiting a little more mass or the slightest disturbance. Interrupt the pattern. Hold the pannikin under the flower. Push through the bush to the ones that show their colour and the black run or glistening drop at their base. No mind to the wet, the scratches and spiders’ webs. No mind to the dropping spend of flowers or leaves all waiting your intrusion. Just get that cup where it can reach. Bump it straight up under the flower. Yes, it makes a noise a clatter in soft morning quiet and birds around seem to protest. Push on. With cup waiting, use your other hand to tap the top of the flower if you can reach into the bush - and runs of drops slip their way down the ladder. Some stop. You tap again … surely they will come. Some miss the waiting cup. They wet your hand and wrist. Sticky waste. But taste it quickly and move on. Taste-buds aclamour. No time to waste; must fill the cup. Ah cascades… here’s another. Cup a third filled. Sip it now. Sa. Its deep nectar smell. So heady… so alive. Comparisons clutter the mind and each is rejected. Nothing to compare. Sip again Sip so small - just the barest - lest it all be gone too soon … prolong this blooming, mouth-filling, sensation. Amazing expensive 50 year old port? Mead? Bortrytis, noble wine? No, this is Nature’s solution. Nectar for the birds - just a billion years in the making. No wonder birds fly high and whistle ‘mongst themselves. No wonder this amazing chorus. No wonder their protests and the scratching spidered bush. No wonder bees buzz and rest deep inside trees with their prize. This so Ssweet secret. Man’s imperfection shamed. ========== Along the Oodnadatta Track FARINA - South Australia At Farina the Ghan, our legendary desert train, once stopped and the north-south telegraph once relayed across Australia. They gave rise to an outpost, then replenishment point, village and a thriving town - Farina. Utilitarian man, slow mindless Bureaucracy, Technology, whatever it is that makes history, grinds on. And Farina turned surely, slowly, to dust along with the telegraph and the old Ghan – a tangle of dreams, hopes, and despair. The Ghan rail-track is still visible with its eroding levees, creek crossings and shallow cuttings. Rotted sleepers have been scattered by a thousand fossickers, wood merchants, and curious hands. No more the clatter and heaving roll of carriages. No longer the groan of couplings riding high - forever heaving to their limits and back. No longer the sway and roll of rails dipping and weaving their way north in the shimmer or bridging washouts. ‘The Ghan’ reflects the outback’s haste and improvisation - and Nature with its penalties. And there’s the telegraph - steel poles and concrete still in place. Arrow straight - waves reflecting what little undulation such an aged and barren land presents. Everywhere, there’s olive grey saltbush stubble or flats of salt and sand and gibber. Gibber polished smooth from a thousand dust storms – and today a hot wind which seems even more constant, incessant, dispiriting than the flies. The constant constant invasion of everywhere wet. Oh to be able to see with eyes closed, to breathe without flies, to enjoy food. If there were a hell, it would have flies. Small, patient, constant, testing, flies. If it didn’t have flies, then that alone would explain my presence there. Through all this runs The Oodnadatta Track. The Strezlecki/Birdsville Track had branched right some thirty kilometres back to run east and north to skirt Lake Eyre’s basin east by a good hundred kilometres. The Oodnadatta Track pounds on ever north to Maree before forking left to follow Lake Eyre’s western rim on a long north western run. Relatively smooth and unchallenging in the dry, the track is bone-jarring corrugations on occasions. Endurance and dust the challenge. Farina knows all this. Old town. Dead town. Just a few remnants on the west of the track. Farina campsite is just ahead. And here it is. Green! I mean verdant peace. Well, almost peace – flies of course. The gibber runs as a barren plain five metres above the green and stops abruptly as a lip. Just step up the bank – and you return to that barren plain. Rock against rock; rock on rock, stones aclatter in between and somehow the stunted olive grey of some unreasonable bush. Surely roots themselves gnarled and calloused in their search for damp – or even cool. Perhaps cool is all they seek – ‘damp’ the bonus that sustains another year, and ‘wet’ that delirious condition for celebration. Sheep pick their way then scramble to a safer stop to look. At sunset galahs play their inexplicable game. A flycatcher, orange and green, intercepts insects in the last hour of the day. In patterns similar to the Kingfisher, it takes up favoured boughs for the next catch. Occasionally it returns to a nest hole in the side of a track, disappears inside – just long enough I guess to feed a chick or partner and out again to continue the dance. There’s rhyme here. Things fit. And here in all of this, man’s hand again. The Ghan’s sleepers now make slab benches. The wash block is framed from rails sunk deep. Its slab walls are uncut sleepers stood on end. The clothes hooks – rail spigots driven into iron hard sleepers. The water heater, a ‘donkey’, is a boiler over a fire-place with the terse instruction to light small fire and wait twenty minutes – and make sure there’s water in the donkey. The camp is hard, masculine, built forever. It's softened here and there by a gentler hand. And the bore water fits in all of this. Iron hard. This water comes from deep down. It’s been a long time on the rise; a long long time from the sight of man. Perhaps never seen. The bore into the artesian basin must have been straight though – I mean really straight. This water would not have come through anything but a straight pipe – much too hard to bend. Water too hard to bend broke into pieces on meeting the light and coughed tumbled and splashed and balled in the dust. Still hard as bricks - but wet. Wet - but bitter taste. Wet - but cool to trickle down your back. Cool, so cool underfoot. Soap that feels like glue. And flies? What flies? The shade and this two inch steel mesh seems to work. At last, peace in Farina’s cool evening……hush ============= |