Wanabi

 

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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?

 

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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".

 

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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

 

 

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People (12)

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Politics (10)

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Nonsense (9)

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Environment (9)

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Memories (2)

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Just Deserts? (3)

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About the Author

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