Wanabi
Introduction
Dedication
These verses are dedicated to Sue,
Richard and Marylyn, Stephen and Karen, Christopher and Kirsty,
and to all their children.
Acknowledgements
Thank you, Joan Loudon, for twenty six years of your
Writing Workshop class at Hobart's University of the Third Age
Foreword
My professional hunting and gathering has been sixty years
of research into the science of forests, soil dryness and bushfires.
As many medieval painters devoted their lives to portraying and
explaining religions - so this, my third volume of poetic hunting
and gathering, includes a few attempts to do much the same for
my tiny wedge of science and its relationship to climate change.
This volume's arranged in eight parts
with three favoured "Places" it starts
where many the "Writings" are made
how "People" their odd quirks parade.
In "Politics" they interact
soon "Nonsense" dilutes every fact
"Environment" attempts to convey
what forests and climate can say.
"Memories" are my story's text.
"Just deserts?" asks 'what happens next?'
Places
The Fabric of Tasmania
"Wanabi", Bruny Island
Pressed Metal Ceilings
Writings
Simmering Those Lazy Words
From the Master...
...to his Willing Apprentice
The Ghost in My Machine
One Hundred Words
Sharing Thought and Flame
People
Listening
No Walk Today
Doing What Comes Naturally
Body Surfing
Corinna's Response
Change
Habits
Re-Pair?
Coloured Candle Celebrations
In Praise of the Ordinary
Nature's Christmas
Little Things
Politics
Gender Roles
Apologize for Idlers?
Follow Which Leader?
Rulers We Deserve?
If We Were Greens
Farewell to Arms
Out of Character
Seventy Percent
Changing Seasons
Silver and Gold
Nonsense
My Number's Up
Dance Doggerel
Papering -over Cracks
Men's Shed
Din of Men Unseen
Scales Tell Tales
So Improbable
The Outing
Honey-Wear
Environment
A Good Idea at the Time
Avian Interactions
If I were a Tadpole
Restoration
It's Bio-engineered
Succession and Climax - Here?
Autumn Isles
Palm Trees
Spring
Hollow Trees Store Lightning Fires
Autumn Rains
Trees Stop Climate Change
Hot Air/Cold Air
Five Elephants
Memories
Opening and Closing Doors
"Mount (S)"
Just Deserts?
Dying With Dignity
Piano Field Farewell
What's Next?
Places (3)
The Fabric of Tasmania
The fabric of Tasmania is made of many things
Of Earth, fresh Air, clean Water and all this Trio brings:-
A rumpling up of mountains; a smoothing down of vales;
A cloud plus sunshine cocktail and not too many gales;
A gratitude of rainfall for everything that grows;
A roar of rushing rivers; some sprinklings of snows.
We split off from Gondwana, adrift on Oz coat-tails!
Through eons, glaciations our little island sails,
Across the Southern ocean away from freezing Pole,
Towards the roaring forties - our Treasure Island stole.
With every movement northwards there is more sun, less rain,
So Lightning starts invading our Trio’s great domain.
Then the eucalypts evolved to welcome bushfire’s roar
So millions of green stars can shine on blackened forest floor.
By forty thousand years ago first people had arrived
And by matching lightning’s ways, by burning, they survived.
Just two hundred years ago we settlers invade,
With axe and plough, sheep and cow, and houses built for shade.
First we hacked and hewed and sowed – made natural world submit.
Soon we found that our own mess was just what lightning lit!
Our greatest ever bushfires, one third of Tas alight,
Christmas eighteen ninety eight’s great spectacle each night!
Today we use and use again all Nature’s mighty store.
We cut her Magic Pudding trees and then come back for more.
But some say “No more Hydro dams, no biomass, stop wood!”
“We should drain all dams make Parks - to do the world most good!”
Tasmania’s tough tartan cloth is made of many strands -
All four Elements of Life that make our fertile lands,
In great weft of travel Time - while heading North through Space
Plus the warp of politics - imposed by human race.
Wanabi* on Bruny Island
(*= bark tapping on tree-trunks)
We rake dry fallen leathered leaves - so bushfire threat stays low.
Thus tree-shade's kept and sea's revealed through tree-trunk colonnade.
When evening sunshine after rain gives bush a golden glow
it's then we thank our lucky stars for everything we've made.
Our eldest chose this land. Our next planned house. We picked best site.
We lost one tree as dozer cleared and levelled house terrain.
Our youngest organised the slab and engineered it right.
Then all three sons built frame and walls and roof to harvest rain.
Our place is like a wooden cave that welcomes Winter sun
with eaves enough to shade most rooms when Summer heat's about.
Veranda, on the sunny side, when evening has begun,
is perfect place to wine and dine and talk till stars come out.
Our hearth is very heart of house - its log flames paint our dreams.
We make few rules like "Leave place clean". "Replace all wood you burn."
We've no TV; just jig-saws, games and treasure-trove in reams
on mantle and 'museum' shelf, where children touch and learn.
Each visit we donate one rock to our rough jetty wall
that guards clear patch of pebbles where our little dinghy lands.
Some days a leaping dolphin school pays us a special call
while we beach-hunt for treasure hiding in the seaweed strands.
Sea eagle rides the wind and cormorants on log pier stand
- as in poor Truganini's day. Our dinghy bears her name.
On Neck's tall hill her bas-relief was made by Grandpa's hand.
Small recognition for deeds past we now recall with shame.
Bright technicolor warming Sun: cool moonlit silver/shade.
Fair weather's billowed cloud-ships sail so proudly through the blue.
White horses start to surf each wave that wind and water made.
Wild, light-split, thundered, drenching rain - then dam stream flows anew.
Once filled with Winter rains, the soil now seethes with growth and life.
Green shoots of grass and shrubs and trees shout out that Spring's a-glow.
We walk, laze, fish in Summer, far from workday's busy strife.
In Autumn we rake leathered leaves - so bushfire threat stays low.
Pressed Metal Ceilings
At U3A's Philip Smith Centre, Hobart, Tasmania
For half your hundred years you heard your teacher trainers preach
their dunce-capped discipline and faith that "rote will get it right".
Though gravity made sure your surface stayed dust-free,
those who taught so many how to teach, breathed clouds of smoke
that clung and stain-addicted all your bas- relief.
Those trainers are long gone - but some of their smart students
hang about, gold-lettered on their crafted Honour Board,
forever stuck between completed learning and completed lives.
Long after teacher-training ceased, your smoke stains cleaned away,
you watched matriculation students being taught
until their Rosny College home was built.
For many years destruction seemed your fate.
But then your neighbours saved the day and brought you back
to be the place where education thrives again.
Later still, your metal pattern painted new, we elders came
to teach each other what we've learnt from life
and how to build brave dignity in death.
From fifteen feet you now survey how our twice-daily tides
come welcoming the warmth and sunlight of your generous room.
Our plastic-dulled coin-clink-ings mark our gifts to Coffee-God
and biscuit thrall that lubricate the rising, fractured din
of all our varied views and ways.
The Sun that filters through tall windows, so difficult to clean,
moves secretly across the room
- its aim to melt our chocolate biscuits in their trays!
Seldom seen by those who mostly watch their feet,
one constant message your smart painted metal patterns still repeat
- "Learning fills this stately room again".
Writings (6)
Simmering Those Lazy Words
Inspired by Vivian Smith's "Summer of the Ladybirds"
Can we learn wisdom watching writing grow?
Just by using quiet observation?
New words from books and newsprint ever flow
marking written word's great variation.
Our writer's drought once blocked each lazy word,
We thought we'd never see them once more reign!
Alone on paper they just looked absurd
awaiting their life sentence yet again.
But one by one more lazy words appear
- obeying some far purpose or design.
We marvel as their numbers gather here
and group together, shuffle into line.
Each day a few stray words come to my mind.
My children laugh as we enjoy the fun
exploring round the edges till we find
the very best positions for each one.
Word lines in quick succession start to turn
into a rough-formed paragraph or two
that slowly simmer (so as not to burn)
until their magic meaning bubbles through.
How random and how frail seems their plight
when they exist alone - they're refugees!
But when assembled well on paper white
they're mightier than Tassie's tallest trees.
From the Master ...
Most Shakespeare sonnets rhyme this common way: -
his first four lines he rhymes “a b a b”
where line one's end and rhyme he's labelled 'a'
and first end change and rhyme he's dubbed with ‘b’.
Next rhyme change is called ‘c’ - so runs the scheme.
All further change conforms to alphabet.
With first eight lines he spells out sonnet’s theme.
Within next four a careful comment’s set.
All sonnets are in fourteen lines compressed,
each line ten syllables in total length,
and of each pair of these, the second’s stressed.
This rhythmic form provides the sonnet’s strength.
Most Shakespeare sonnets rhyme the last two lines
from out of which the theme’s synopsis shines.
... to his willing Apprentice
Season of highs, blue skies and fine, dry days,
cool morning mists that loll in lower lands.
Some old smoke hangs around from last night's blaze
when bush brigade burnt off to train new hands.
The low flames sapped the great inferno's harm.
They stole its rage before next summer's height.
So saving crop and stock and fence and farm,
while freeing native bush from die-back blight,
which spreads where we have stifled with our fears
the cleansing flames from fire-adapted ways
of trees and shrubs that for twelve million years
regrew each time that lightning caused a blaze.
With such cool burning we can keep from harm
ourselves, our native forest and our farm.
The Ghost in My Machine
My "Dial-up Connection" screen will not say its goodbyes!
I "disconnect" and "cancel" but it suddenly replies
by blotting out my clever words as I extemporise.
My firm command "delete now!" - it just silently denies
and re-appears each time I start on each new exercise.
This ghost that lives in my machine I'll have to exorcise.
To do this I expect I'll have to wear a new disguise
- a cloak that one young wily geek, when paid enough, supplies.
I delete my magic password but then before my eyes
it takes no time at all, at all, to quickly re-arise!
Has my computer made a mind that ever on me spies?
Beneath black brickwork patterned keyboard cracks he lies
I stay awake each night in bed and hear frustrated cries
be-moaning the imprisonment on which his life relies
The other day I backed-up all my files of every size
so lap-top's free to be maintained by all those expert guys
who are all trained and will ensure my drive disc's cauterised
and deal with all the other quirks and quibbles they think wise.
But will I tell them of the ghost that through the keys might rise
and spread to every other job they have to supervise?
Or just stay silent?
One Hundred Words
Our Fellowship inspires the pace of what we write.
Our Hundred Words, we try with grace
to read that night
that second Friday blossoms out. In words we draw,
with magic mumble, song or shout,
new pictures for
our fellow scribes to hear then write from sparks that start
new blazes in their dreams that night.
So from each heart
ideas create new passions, sounds. With words we fight
with fictions, truths - five minute rounds -
on Members Night.
Above it all each writer tries, in prose or rhyme,
to win an Annual Writing Prize
at least one time.
Sharing Thought and Flame
Remembering Betty Nicholson, Hobart F.A.W.
Stranger in strange house I feel nervous in my chair.
What will spoken thoughts reveal when my mind’s laid bare?
But the welcome words are strong, “Keep the burning bright;
others soon will come along sharing warmth and light.
Wheel that barrow load of wood through the kitchen door,
stacks made close to every hearth give us flames galore!”
Will my words, like these logs, meet the sparks that make them flame
generate sufficient heat, warm folks to my name?
Though to ash these logs burn slow, words like smoke can rise
making patterns as they go, painting sunset skies.
Now I tell them of my songs hesitant but clear
that may right our island wrongs so all disappear.
Quietly I’m listened to. Someone wise and kind
tells me what I need to do, to more magic find.
Transient as poems are they can tell a tale
longer than a shooting star’s atmospheric trail.
Stranger I come to your place, but I feel today
welcomed as each friendly face hears what I must say.
Writing Workshop afternoon, very glad I came,
hope there’ll be another soon sharing thought and flame