WA Poets Inc Creatrix 47 Poetry

the way jodhpurs accented it, her long legs.
At how it spread, became winged when she –
more surely than I – then so thin-thighed –
sat a horse. Watched, sideways mostly
how it moved when she walked
became a creature clinging to her back;
how – loose-hung – it floated – shimmied –
jiggered – shivered – quivered – jounced –
and smiled.

Loved, too, the plums, apricots, nectarines
figs and pears growing in our backyard:
a cornucopia of curves I also could not touch
until November, when I’d fall upon – squeeze –
caress – gorge before the parrots flew in
sat cheekily just out of reach, cawing joyous
twenty-eights, clutching flesh in dripping claws
cracking and discarding husks, feasting on seeds

then – while I – sticky-fingered, too –
watched from the steps – taking off
low to the ground this time
miniature bombers overloaded with sweetness
becoming cartoon silhouettes of Mum’s bum
winging slowly into the sky.

Peter Burges

A Skateboarders’ Convention

They gather outside the Woolstore’s
back entrance under the single bloom
of a bottlebrush made skeletal by the oomph
required to throw shade flat and thin-
seeming as the high-hard sky.

All black-n-grey hoodied and wearing caps
turned backwards – the mascot’s is red –
signifying Januses youth-fleshed. –
androgynous – yet old as the streets
they skate – hard as the terminals
of their most common consonants
soft as the initial phuh.

Then the girls come – bringing ceremony –
bright and dark – and kissings –
and the boys’ faces pulse with smiles –
then smirks – and their banter rises a notch
as each kiss is badged with a ‘like’ –
for the dopermine rush that leaves
their limbs antsy.

So they strut – all the time adjusting cocks –
revolving round Red Cap – their wide-eyed
campfire and repository for tradition –
retelling myths ancient as yesterday
about the tribe’s athletic climaxes –
tall tales – wild as wind gusts –
precious as their latest scabs.

Peter Burges

Marking Time

Tears fall to a syncopated beat
in a cuppa racked in space between
white noise and shuffled hands.

There is sense to making do.
The object of oblivion that settles
into each breath, each movement.

How a sigh can hold the world
and a look catch a heart
and everywhere, the coming

and going as if permanence
is an obscenity.
How falling is natural

and coming home equates with stars
and moonlight. That soft envelope
made of dreams and being held close.

Sometimes surrender, makes more sense
than peeling layers, how the miniscule
outweighs the elephant and under it all

there is love. Sometimes, catching
a sunrise before the cold bites
is enough warmth for the whole day

and when the sun sets
the last light holds a little longer
in stars like glistened tears.

Gary Colombo De Piazzi

Shadows to the Horizon

Dancers turned aboriginal wound around
a Kimberley community shrouded in red dust
as fine as air and the heat sweats dew.
Builds clouds too dark to fold as they tumble
across thunder crashed lightning and the humidity
eats into every living tree, every living wallaby
as the wind bucks against the shanties that
connect man and land. A corrugated experience
that clings to dirt tracks reaching to the horizon.

And somewhere, a brolga sweeps a billabong
eases into the wind, swoops to rise
bound to a choreography older than stone.
The living easing into permanence in a country
bound by change. A push/pull existence none
can accommodate and every evening, the red land
finds its mirror in the sky and the sun grows bulbous
as it creases the horizontal line to cast black man
white man to shadows alike on the red earth.

Gary Colombo De Piazzi

green time

not long until sunset
with light
streaming ribbons of
silver and mauve
across the lake
while baby ducks –
mini submarines
heads like conning towers –
suddenly dive
‘uptails all’

black swans lead
cygnets who no longer wear
camouflage
having grown closer to
adult elegance

this is our green time
a breeze stirring
leaves of Moreton Bay Fig
eucalypt plane trees

bird life abounds
corellas hold a clamorous
meeting on the grass then
screech skywards

but in the silences
mudlark
willy wagtail
silvereye
make soothing sounds
while we walk

and I think about that other
walk –
the desperate walk of world
refugees
cont dangerous endless

green time merely a dream

Margaret Ferrell

A Prayer For Animals

Dear Heavenly Father,
We pray for all earthly animals,
for dogs and cats
for birds, hens and canaries;
for those that run along the ground,
those that climb trees,
swim in lakes, rivers and seas.
We pray that they have food
and shelter and are respected
for their place in the evolutionary scale.
We weep when a species
becomes extinct,
acknowledging our role
in keeping their environment
Clean and safe.
Please give all animals
sanctuary protecting them,
Where possible from
natural predators.
Teach us kindness and respect
for animals with a wariness
for those who might
harm us.
Should we need to take
an animal’s life let it be
with mercy and respect.
Amen

Sally Gaunt

Mud

Mud,
a glorious graduation from sand and silt,
tidal as the moon,
slipping across the sky

in those days wellingtons were black,
rubber gum boots moulded to fit thick socks and fat ankles,
mud challenging their grip like an arm wrestler,
defeat sucked out soles

why did I venture into this terrain,
the edge of the estuary at its deepest retreat,
a tide line, unshaven and sleeping rough,
far from summer pedicures and gritty sand

later, I searched for the body of a colleague,
Jumping Jack had been saved from the bridge,
he was given a tag instead of a bungee rope,
my childhood mud tried to swallow us that day

Ann Gilchrist

Nannup Thylacine

The Karri trees have caged the afternoon sunlight,
a Thylacine wears his pouch like a jock strap
and stripes like the strip of the country football club.

He illuminates the warped timber decking,
standing sentry on the craft shop veranda,
a resin replica with echoes of the price on his head.

Behind him, the toxic forest groans,
poison baited deep into the undergrowth,
man selects species for eradication
and if extinction is a rumour,
the tiger will swallow the truth in it.

Ann Gilchrist

‘beneath the fall of water’

one clear searing note, its ache not
akin to me, of metal scarring metal,
raw Hertz of regret – a salted sky,
tears not mine to sell – all this remembered,
painted by numbers, but not to dry
for wet is the colour of thinking

back, when leaves were dancing, when we could read
the long hand of cirrus, you saw the islands,
dolloped on the horizon, as hope.
urgent jazz – we were that – improvised,
unresolved. for a while we didn’t see the gulls,
commas cut loose from our sentences,
for a while chords and clouds were suffice

‘beneath the fall of water’ – our days, your title,
hard-back, found under ficto-history –
the tide generous, hushed but undecided

Kevin Gillam

the room where us three guppies –
pink and two fluoro greens – swim
with faces pressed hard against glass

and fins working ritual is
our quest for other gravities in
this room where three guppies swim

but its no symphony in here –
we’re musicless, feeding on light,
faces hard and pressed against glass,

anything to forestall the
inevitable onset of gods in
this room where us three guppies swim

and we’re stroking for spangled
belief and tides and stopping,
faces pressing hard against the glass

but it’s the disease that will
take us, leave us green lipped
with faces pressed against glass in
the room where three guppies swam

Kevin Gillam

Eros

‘Eros the melter of limbs (now again) stirs me –
Sweetbitter unmanageable creature who steals in’
Sappho

Eros, the god of love
no wonder you’re the son of Chaos,
as it leaves all of us
in somewhat dis-array, capable
of complete transformation
and longings which
trace a hidden part of us
we don’t yet fully know.

And later your guise as
the son of sexual love –
Aphrodite’s no less,
an Errol Flynn make-over
that leaves the rest of us
limp with uncertainty

passion and fertility
oozes from your presence
within, within.

Mike Greenacre

Petrarchan Ode to Woodstock

It’s been a long time since I rock and rolled’
Led Zeppelin
thrashing through punk, new wave, before indie
gripped teenagers
minds and more, forgetting the lust and thrill
of Alvin Lee and Jimi Hendrix lead
guitar chasing
the blues away
from Vietnam – three days of love.

Mike Greenacre

Sisterly Love

They are all wounded children.
Pain coats their hearts
beating like rain against sadness
as tears soak their faces
all unseen.
Just bitterness and anger on display
There is no light
only deep recesses and caverns of dark emotion
Love has gone.
Cries of hurt yell as wounds of the past are revealed,
never to heal in this emotion.
Justification speaks loudly.
Forgiveness just a fantasy.
The thread has been lost in their tapestries’
Only the warp remains

Ann Harrison NSC

Hitler’s teeth! [so to speak]

I am Hitler’s teeth, … his dentures.
I live on, though burned with him,
after his death, at his instigation.
I was with him thru the manic years
up to his fiery end.
The words he spoke
were spoken thru me.
That I can attest.

Now I am captive,
sat alongside the satin-lined box
in which I was supposedly kept,
when not required,
all those years ago.

I now wait, for what?
Observing all that can be seen
from within a locked glass cabinet
in a Soviet State Repository.
I’m here for those who wouldn’t believe,
but he’s long, long dead,
believe me.

Why keep me here? Do they expect me to speak
on his behalf and so must never be released?

Peter Knight

Street Addict

He sidles and slouches down our street
with barely the strength to lift his feet.
Dark hair falls lank across his eyes,
no-one cares if he lives or dies.
His face tells a story, one of despair,
we can’t understand, cannot compare
our lives protected, are far away
from the world he deals with every day.
Experience marks him, he endures great pain
as agony courses through his veins.
He needs his fix to feel alive
Nothing else matters, somehow he’ll contrive
to find the money so he can score
he’ll steal and sell and even whore.
To find that high, he’d sell his soul,
And when he’s flying he’s on a roll.
He floats, he dreams, he soars on high
and doesn’t care that he might die.
Yet when he comes down to confront his fears
he’s only a boy, just fourteen years.
One who shakes, who trembles, who yearns, who craves.
Making no sense, he babbles, he raves.
The words he cries out beg for something real
In his head he’s afraid to let himself feel
The way back to normal is hard and so long,
it’s doubtful if he can ever be that strong.
He needs just one more, one rush to extremes
and then he’ll come down, that’s what he dreams.
Society watches, judges, disowns
then leaves him out there, lost and alone.

Veronica Lake

Hunter

Wings
flutter frantic,
equidistant.
Curved body
suspended
between
still movement.

Wings
stretch extensive,
one perfect arc.
Retract, fold tight.
Missile body,
plummets
to the kill.

Veronica Lake

Sawpit Creek

We watch snow-gums wrestle the storm
till sleet lashing the window
closes us in

three days in a donga
tin walls tension tighter
clutch my throat

barbs ice-filed to needle points
score the leathery skin
of our friendship.

Road clears we head for Charlotte’s Pass
rocks lost under lumpy pillows
limbs of snow-gums frosted white

above the tree line meringue makes soft peaks
of mountains folds over meadows
glossed by the sun

we watch our
breath mingle dissipate
allow silence

Diana Messervy

Thin Places

Thin place…a means whereby the sacred becomes present to us.
Marcus Borg

Celts revered thin places
sites of sacred energy where spirit
shimmered through dry bones
and gilded ancient stones

First Australians understood the
thinness of Carnarvon Gorge
rising mist from billabongs
as earth breathed out the night

full moon over Hinchinbrook
and Brahminy Kite
a thermal soaring speck
in the eye of morning sky

I watch the gold remains of day
egrets rise from cattle in waves
trace serpentine shapes in the dusk
and float like feathers into the trees

at last pink flush of light on the ridge
crickets call night in gathering damp
I hold my baby bundled against cold
breathe the fragrance of his head

this moment’s grace a thin place.

Diana Messervy

on playing a desk piano

after a talk by David Malouf

in your head is music

if you learn a poem
off by heart, you learn
not to fear language

the process is mysterious
or maybe not

an auditory imagination
falls out of your head
sound & meaning
lovers, locked

there are no rules
as long as we ignore
iambic pentameter
sonnets, villanelles
& all that other stuff

face up to it:
a bit each day
can complete
an arc

fashion your fiction
put together associations:
luminous autonomy
is so “in” this season

where this, the poem, is going
is already inside the poem
slowing the reader down

symbolic, the action is a tone
pointing out the vista, the view:
tuart, jarrah, ghost gum, midday sun

above all else, remember this:
a lot will be attributed to you
after you finish

Scott-Patrick Mitchell

river sonnet

water knows the way
carries grief on tiny boats:
fallen leaf; drowned bee; mist
rolling; other things that float

to wade to the waist
is to exist between two worlds:
fish tug at us with a currency
of scales as thoughts comb sedge

give in to baptism:
submerge, oh fill our lungs,
let us hold our breath, count

until water blues into me

& you, then gasp: blessed be
the rush & flux of death, lift us

Scott-Patrick Mitchell

All I Ever Wanted…

was a horse
.   a horse with ears like seashells borrowed
from beaches where Neptune’s stallions rear and plunge
.   a horse with eyes so deep you fall and fall
into slumberous amber        become slaved to story
.   a dappled mare       her coat a storm of stars
shoulders and haunches the colour of cobwebs
.   smoothed over snow      milky spill of mane and
tail silk in wind       a dream of a horse.

All I ever wanted was a horse
. but dreams deflate like balloons       a shoehorn house
squeezed dad out to TABs where the geegees
. ate wages not hay        no Silver Brumby pranced
childhood’s pages       no photo of Phar Lap over
. our fireplace       but patting police greys at a parade
I knew that if I knelt each night       asked Him…

All I ever wanted was a horse
. and finally my children have left me old Taffy
to fuss over and spoil        ah look at the little dear
.   limping across for his bran mash       see his blind eye
his hairy heels and swayback      isn’t he fine now?
.   isn’t he lovely?        isn’t he all the horses
you could ever wish for?

Jan Napier

Coming in to Freo

. in winter light
days are grey scale
.   westerly winds hollow afternoons
fishermen hunch shelterless
. tailor and herring drown in dry buckets
lighthouses green sea gazing
.   gulls flurry to a bollard       sheep ship stink
clang clank cranes loom over
.   berthing freighters     tugs fussing like mothers
rainlight paints the bridge in wet
.   the river’s a misty drift        filmic and flat
a homeless man maroons
.   on an island      car tyres wish wishing
an octopus sprawls a wall
.   and the rainbow’s not real

Jan Napier

Pencil

Pencil thin.
Sharp but untried.
I met you in a tutorial,
your voice first
from down the table,
then the author
of that voice.
The persona. The person.
The body.
Your colours, black
and white, and a grey
skirt. A pencil skirt.
Pencil grey.
A scholar, without
a stoop. Straight. Linear.
Apart from schoolgirl
curves.
How to hold you?
How to fit you in my hand?
To start to write.

Julian O’Dea

The falling

We fell from the mountain top through unnamed greens,
where gnashing streams mount granite boulders and sprayed away
past ribknit sheep.
We fell through miner’s tents hugged in sleet and ice and children’s cries
across the sluice while women toiled with reddened fingers
around tin buckets.
And still we fell through squatter’s paddocks, by rough roan cattle
beyond barbtwist fences which squared away the wood block, axe,
a Kosciuszko of kindling piled.
We fell down along the creek of foreign poplars holding strong
to washed out banks of summer pools where cloudswan mirrors
lay lazily in laughter.
Down we fell by forlorn proud chimneys sprouting green spiked skirts;
where gate and path now unheeded, tangle in humping blackberries
which no small hands will gather.
And on we fell by silvered canoe tree, spared the ringbarked fate
of other gums because the buggy passed on a dusty track
left of the river bank.
Then we fell no more.
A levelling of senses and road
a greeting of store and roofs and broad bridges rumbled
by truck and caravan; just a magpied sign pointing north:
Jingellic Road.

Virginia O’Keeffe

Drier Than Any Bone

My mates and family over east
are citing the dreadful dry landscapes
they inhabit as first-hand evidence
of a buggered-up world. The Bega Valley
was once a year-round
lush green bowl for dairy cows
but now it is drier
than any bone could ever be –
and twice as lean.

All cows that live there now are only halves
of their former fattened whole,
desperate for the depth of taste and feeling
to be found in leaves and flowers of clover.
Close to extinction as trucks back up
and dogs snap heelward and men steer
beasts to fatal loading. Such is fate:
a milking placid cow one day,
Daisy on the trot and moo;
merely meat for hamburger patties the next –
and bearing a fancy packaged all-in name
to hide the skulking fear.

All faith crushed by lack of falling sky
all work dismembered bar for the laying out
of hay and grain bought with further debt not money.
Kids from dying farms wondering why the dogs
are weeping dust inside their barks. In sky,
a hint of wet – but nothing falls, except wind
and dry. Brown is the new normal, green a memory.

Driving deep into valley toward rearing blue mountain
peaks it is easy to forget the pain behind
and hug what lies ahead: arching tree ferns
under eucalyptus-emerald light
as cool clear water trickles
down a roadside rock face
and moss asserts its hold. No scorched landscape
here. Rather, hints and dreams
of what life was
in those lush and glimmering green valleys
where cows rolled fat
with udders pleading
through grass so tall and comforting
it could hide the tears of every
ordinary day. But now,
there are far too many –
and these waterfalls of tumbling grief

are not for hiding

Allan Padgett

it had its own name

half your ponytail was hanging over the back
of the seat in front i fought wildly extravagant impulses
to cut it off but gave in because i left my scissors
at home & my teeth are too aged for biting hard
my brain is screaming out for a fix
the bus trundles past a coffee shop
i yell an order & poke my lengthy tongue
through the window, longing. it’s a circuit route –
route as in root, not rout as in massacre. on the
way past three hours later
there is a barista waiting for me
i throw it back expecting a hint of
throat volcano syndrome
but it’s cold it’s been three hours
he didn’t care & now, nor do i. a small church
to my right, pretty & stoned; i’d like to round up
the perth zoo lions & throw them
into a sunday congregation like the romans used to do
before some neanderthal invented football. religion sucks,
& so do leaches. now there’s a jazz club on my right
it takes me back, way back, to london or was it
melbourne. dunno but I loved frank traynor anyway. it is
tuesday & i am feeling rather buggered. did i tell you
that my wife is in hospital with four aneurysms. it is tough
but we keep on trying. three black swans
were sitting on the river the other day; i say black
since we might have been in prague & if we were
then the swans would be white, even if they had flown
from perth to there. it’s the climate & the culture,
it generates adaptation in more ways than one. where
was i. it had its own name
just a couple of hundred years ago

Allan Padgett

Painting the heart

artist brushes, palette knives
canvass stretched and primed
a vibrant rainbow colour wheel

tinctures of our hopes
extracts of desire
pigments of our knowledge
shades of our humanity

spin in centrifugal forges

covalent bonds disaggregate
reshape the colour palette into

monochrome
in forges laced with fear

black, tainted pigment
finely ground by stone hewn pestles
deftly brushed on living canvass

black velvet, viscous particles
sharp enough to penetrate
to overpaint the human heart

Yvonne G Patterson

an odd shape

ive never been able to fit inside this jig saw puzzle.
how cruel it can be
to be so lonely.

in the country,
the red dirt and soldier ants
scared
my weekend path
to river banks and day dreams.

sometimes hiding.

i would press my bruises then softly circle it
with my river sand speckled finger, sending light patterns
to my senses.

when the grey sirened corridors of childhood
schooled us into adults,
they went to the city and I went to prison.
i made the newspapers
and washed linen for $2 a day.

not a god
but a long road I found and so I sold my thumb
to strangers and we drove inside the politeness
of journey.
i remember laughing with a cousin when I was 6 and so my road promised me
he would find you.
but I didn’t fit there either.

its not easy killing yourself with a hunting knife, its jagged edges a resume of your past,
on your knees,
note on the bench,
at your best friends house,
no-one to say goodbye.

but I missed and you glued me back together again in a shape people ignored more.

and so here I am.
unable to fit inside this jig saw puzzle.

. except in poetry.

Mike Pedrana

Lost

Seaweed beach, the waves crash
sand and cuttlefish, her footprints pass
like the time, echoed in the wind
hiking to the future, her past back there.
I am lost, she tells her lover
eyeing him in fear, her compass spinning
north to south, south to north
worthy of consideration, her words escape
muted sounds like music, notes of lust
fluted, a symphony
accompanied by gulls, shrieking calls,
alone now, she stands
alone on seaweed beach, the waves crash.

Barry Sanbrook

Embodiment

Inspired by Mary Oliver’s ‘Wild Geese’ from “Dream Work”

you are not undesirable   fly   collect
nectar  become the honey in the hive
smooth   luscious   golden

allow your body to love what it loves and who
it loves including you love with yearning
voracious passion no judgement

confide in me then cast your burdens to the storm
to be dashed against mountains you will move to
the next moment the next cloud where hope dwells

your sensual self will become an ocean   the tides
of which will settle in your mind   and drift through
your body   lapping gently.

. meanwhile you will come home to this place
where warmth inhabits your heart hugs soothe
and you are softened into a downy doona.

. you will dream of moving through the universe
free with a kind of shameless hunger for more
knowing this is you and this is all there is

Maureen Sexton

Learning from Frida

adorned with bold Mexican colours, flowers, flowing
peasant skirts to hide her broken body imprisoned
by pain, she created her own freedom challenged
cultural norms, cross-dressing, openly bisexual
a fragile dove, *Wounded Deer she hurled
her arrows at greed, capitalism – in her painting
**Self-Portrait on the Borderline between Mexico and
the United States, Mexico is portrayed as colourful
with symbols of flowers, a bear, cultural icons
the US is all grey buildings, industry, pollution
Frida stands in the centre holding the Mexican
flag – wearing a man’s suit, cropped hair one day
and traditional Mexican dress the next, Frida
was owned by no-one, adored by many

I escaped the prison of religion, locked the book
behind me   my religion is science and nature
I express the world in bold colours through
art, photography and writing, explore my sexuality,
identity, in ways that I choose   despite imprisonment
in pain, like Frida, I am one of a herd of wounded
cheetahs, climbing mountains, launching our poison
arrows at capitalism, racism, sexism   the universe
is my mirror, where I find my colours, paint my life

Maureen Sexton

*Frida Kahlo, “The Wounded Deer”
https://www.fridakahlo.org/the-wounded-deer.isp

**Frida Kahlo, “Self-Portrait on the Borderline between Mexico and The United States“
https://www.fridakahlo.org/self-portrait-along-the-boarder-line.isp

Wheatbelt Wood-heap

Reject battered obdurate lumps
discarded by those unversed.
Those chipped cerebra of wood
with grizzled swirling grain.
Leave alone.

Choose again.
Rotate the root full circle,
study the angles and facets
of your lumpy mediaeval mace.
Identify a weakness in the grain.
Then one blow will split the stump asunder
surrendering a complex mallee brain.

Laurie Smith

Sing a Song of Syllables

Some languages
are polysyllabically prolix.
Take Russian–
Akhmatova Dostoyevsky
Solzhenitsyn Turgenev Yevtushenko
not to mention diminutives
and promiscuity with patronymics.

Mandarin
is
syllable
mean
prefers

one
for
family:
DU Fu
DING Ling
LU Zhun
LI Po–

yet is happy
to indulge
in caressing
repetition
when names
are given:
Fei Fei
Jia Jia
Wei Wei
Xia Xia–

and will
concede
two vowels
for domestic
tropes:
Mama
Baba
Yeye
Nainai
Taitai
Didi.

But
if
something’s
very
good
just one
suffices–
Hao!

Rita Tognini

Mummified

I wanted us to last forever;
to leave our mark in history
as the invincible couple
who never crumbled.

I wanted hieroglyphics
to tell our love story
rather than proclaim
the writing was on the wall.

I wanted us to be preserved;
our relationship mummified,
but it unravelled when I needed the bandages
to soak up the blood of my wounds.

I wanted us to be forgotten;
for our ruins to be buried so deep underground
no archaeologist could ever dig up evidence
of the mess we created.

I wanted nothing more from you
the day you left me in a tomb
with nothing but the curse of our memories
to remind me I was not dead.

Kelly Van Nelson

Paperchase

We met at the photocopier
A black and white cliché
I scanned your face
While you pressed the start button

Our love was a paperchase
Post-it-notes left on desk
Morning cardboard coffee cups
Afternoon news filtering around the office

We were in the public eye
Gossip fodder for consumption
Spreading like wildfire
Causing our own flames to perish
Until out of print

Kelly Van Nelson

Afterimage

above the city
a lone hawk soars
beautiful and rare

for such a long time
there was only you

Maggie Van Putten

High Tea

table cloths
fold in the wind
she covers the glass-
topped table
runs her eyes
over white sheets
i pass
unnoticed

note
the potager garden
has gone to seed
the cucumber
sandwiches
no longer
home-made

Rose van Son

Fine Dining

Verminous tree-angels click their destinations under the
Evening star, strobed in half-light, clawing spaces.
Summer spills its sunlight, a shaman of evening
Poised to welcome night’s stillness.
Engorging bats slip through trees to feast like shadowy
Restauranteurs resplendent in dress suits.
Tableware of eggshell thin forelimbs they select from the smorgasboard
Imbibe nectar in the rain of night (oblivious to gunshot)

Navigating, distillating, respiration swarming
Effervescent frogs paint the sky with song

Gail Willems

Galactical

I try to get my seeking mind
around the stretch of the galaxies
the aspirating drag of black holes
from which even light cannot flee.

Power pulses in tiny leptons
through blazars and quasars
to the spirals and stems of galaxies
and flowers like earthly plants.

And the numbers, Lord, the numbers,
Our Milky Way counts two billion stars,
or three billion, and their existence
shines among two, or three, billion systems.

Hints of multiverses stretch further
the seeker mind which started this quest:
can one un-see what one has seen
and not percolate with endless wonder?

Ted Witham

Lean on Me

What can be better
than laughing with you
as waves comb into pebbles
and we plunge shivering into warm surf?

We shared our secrets
after that meteor
streaked into nothingness —
as rare as a moment of tenderness.

While I floated,
the Aegean current beneath,
you showed me how,
arm over shoulders, to save someone from drowning.

Each in our capsule
Of self, on the shore
Shifting on uncomfortable stones,
We exchanged our unique coins of experience.

On the way back
we sat near a statue
of a Greek philosopher
who would have understood our bond.

Your last girlfriend
kept you concerned,
while I listened with my eyes
to your compassionate poise.

In the intervals
of silence, smell
of dry leaves. We sat
speaking words richer than jewels.

The next morning,
thinking of you,
I watched someone rescue
a bird fluttering against a window.

Colin Young

Paths

Lost in between
narrow stone walls,
steep pavements
and sudden bends.

A tunnel ahead –
buttressed under its roof
by cemented branches
of long-dead trees.

Emerging, I ask
someone the way —
“No English,” the reply.

I find the road
again, groping
after familiarity
as if in another life.

A sign guides me
to a mountain path.
Village is now behind me.
Shoes crunch over gravelled
limestone. Bowed acacias
fringe low walls rough with rocks.

I think of you even now,
your memory a lodestone
for my direction.
You half a globe
away, I hunting meaning
from centuries of wind.

So many olive trees
twisting in unison,
and rapacious thorns
visited by ants.

Colin Young

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