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Mangrove

 

The sweat of mangrove cakes my skin

Black mud and white salt crystals

I explore the mud, it oozes between my toes

It feels disturbing and glorious at the same time

In amongst the root system, in the mud,

Can be found the always sought mud crab

Delicious and succulent in equal amounts

At high tide unseen roots grab your feet

At low tide, walking with eyes, a little easier

Yet the peril of entanglement always remains

Spoon shaped leaves with rounded tips,

Glossy green top, pale green underneath

Hang to a shrub of dark and rough bark

Upper tidal reaches show the detritus, the

Organic debris from the decay of organisms

Disappointingly in some reaches I only find

The increasing inorganic undecayed mess

That floats and flows in from a throwaway society

Sedimentation, inundation, always restoration

Mangrove

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Farmers

 

They live on an axis of feast and famine

Fire and flood, stability and instability

Working in a land of open mountain ranges

And wild sweeping plains not seen in poetry

 

Their everyday life is a dish often served cold

Cold hard facts, cold winds, cold mornings

Cold nights at the end of a long cold day

And when marriage fails, a cold double bed

 

(Just swap the word hot for cold in summer time)

 

Distance is measured in crows or cockatoos

How far they have flown over the horizon,

How far from one end of the farm to the other,

Either will be twice as far again to the nearest doctor

 

Morbidity and mortality are close companions

Where one is the other is often sure to follow

The further the farmer is from civilisation

The greater the mental and physical risk implied

 

Even now there can be a scarcity of data to study

If truth be known there is little self reporting

Physical and mental health doesn’t get much airtime

When  drought or financial hardship is on the table

 

Most urbanites don’t think or talk about farmers

Talk may cost the farmer little but it can be hard

I mean, who do they get to talk to at 4am in the morning

No one awake then and no one drops by at 4pm for a chat

 

Some studies talk about adverse life events

I wonder if farmers think that life is their adverse event

The experts always say they want farmers to talk

Lets move the health services closer to them for a start

 

I’m one of those urbanites that don’t do much

I watch the docos on farmer suicides and think how sad

Maybe I can start with thinking more and ignoring less

Because every farmer is a someone to some one

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Station

 

Behind the yellow line is fine

Made of laid squares with tactile sign

Fronting a blue & white priority seating line

Stretching from over here to over there

Showing someone in need that someone cares

Priority needs we need to share

So we follow two bands of steel that run

From first of moon to last of sun

Laid on sleepers for travellers to come

Ghosted fettler gangs from far away

Sun hardened bodies to sweat in the day

All colours of men on minimum pay

Station – that singular, fixed, land location

The travelling workers traffic salvation

It all began with a little imagination

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Earth Body

There’s a hole near a tear in my eye where the rain gets in, mixing with the sand leaking from the beach inside my mind where the seagulls are fighting the pelicans for the last fish on earth. In the world of mammals, politicians will end up with the biggest mouths on earth if the Bowhead whale was to prematurely demise as a species. I hope their longevity continues to exceed that of the political mammal. Has anyone seen a Bowhead whale recently? The echoes of past conversations bounce around in the auditory canals seated within the skeleton of my head. Sometimes the messages are clear, other times, not so. Have I heard this one before, will I listen or ignore. Do we still have bite in the fight against the wrongs of this world or do we suffer with ever deepening divisions drilled into us by those who always want more but expect others to pay for their dental work. The weight of the world is bending shoulders like never before with the yoke placed around the neck of the honest only adding to an ever increasing load. My arms ache but I cannot determine if it is because I am cradling more of the world in my arms or because I am dangling off a cliff and struggling hard to hang on. I feel sick to my stomach as if I had just eaten the last fish on earth, poisoned by the pollution and neglect the fish was forced to ingest. The seagulls and the pelicans are now eyeing each other off. Forests and jungles are said to be the heart and lungs of the earth – I think they have been smoking more than two packets a day. I gave up, the forests however never had the chance as they were forcefed the belching smoke of bulldozers, front end loaders and chainsaws. My legs are not as strong as they once were and I wonder if Atlas is now down on his knees as he struggles with the weight of the world. I look at my feet and wonder who will wash them as the Pope is nowhere to be seen. It’s hard to find unpolluted water anywhere nowadays – the earth continues to tell us that. My physical body wants to lay down to rest, to sleep, but I don’t think the earth body has that much time left.

TYS4

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Spine Cracks

Spine cracks as

book bends back

palm press crease

feels paper soul

moist tongue tips

finger and thumb

to fold corners

marking place

of leaving

or return

sit quiet

chair rocking

eyes drinking

alphabet sipping

book heart

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Are We Butterflies

We begin the same – encased

Ranging in size, beginning small

As we grow, we are slowly seen

When born, we emerge

Eating to nourish

Vital for growth

Like caterpillars

We outgrow ourselves

Transform

As we grow

Others recognise the changes

Some grow faster than others

Rising from youth to adult

We spread our wings

Searching for a partner

Nature to nurture

It begins again

Are we butterflies

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Whisper

I whisper in the night

Do you hear me

I can speak no louder

Maybe your heart hears

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I Have No Clothes to Wear in My Dreams

I think my world is disappearing, I have no clothes to wear in my dreams, reality is setting itself up in a new dimension where eventually there will be no sound, not even breathing, feeling and independent thought will disappear, they will both be outlawed, everyone will sleep but their time will not be real, their breathing will be controlled by the last remaining 1% of the 1% – (even they will cannibalise themselves in the end) – the intravenous drip will be unacknowledged caught in a blindspot created by a chemically induced mind fog in a view of a dystopian future foreshadowed in Metropolis, maybe we are already there, could it be that any convenient reality could be manufactured, grown under false pretence and we won’t even know the difference between what is real and what is not, can you feel the needle point in your arm, it will always be there and there will be no cotton wool swab taped over a wound left by the needles removal – there will be no houses only warehouses, no beds only camp stretchers, mile upon mile stacked high & long, some will say the people are dead, others will say they are alive, all will say, they are dreaming – I have no clothes to wear in my dreams.

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In Time Forgotten

The lane was rutted and pitted
(a bit kangaroo edward)
you could see the potholes easily
and not just the ones that had appeared
after the flood

Like the expression
‘this road has seen better days’
this lane certainly had.
Oh, and the floods,
I’m talking about the ’74 ones

It was a dusty little lane
off a country road
not far from the highway
with a turnoff easily missed
The sign was gone.

The grass was slowly encroaching
from the verge to the wheel tracks
as very little traffic, if any, now
travelled down this back country lane
Time moves on

Down the end of the lane were two
weather beaten timber homes
with that familiar, black mouldy
look about them, where the last bit of paint
had flaked off about 30 years ago

The strangler vine had done its work
for what was once two houses,
now appeared as one with the vine
engulfing both in its wanton squeeze
In the garden bed, flowers still bloomed

The white ants had feasted well
with half the stumps eaten away
and the other half barely standing up
The floor of the house dipped and swayed,
looking more like the roll of the ocean

In a time forgotten this lane had thrived
Fifteen houses, eighteen families
they had their own football team
and enough kids for two cricket teams
they were known far and wide

But as families moved and banks foreclosed
the houses were sold for the price of the timber
The old remained but their years were numbered
and in the end, it was just the two of them;
brothers with a long lived gene.

Ninety five years they had lived in this lane – twins
The houses identical having been built and
crafted in their younger days when they married,
Three generations had walked those floor boards
yet sadly, in the end, just the twins remained

They died within days of each other
Nothing suspicious, but the causes were unknown
They have been gone for twenty years now and
I still remember them so well though,
families’ always will I guess

Time will tell, as it always does
the last houses will fall
the lane will become over grown
and in the end even the memories will be,
in time forgotten

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The Magdalene

From Magdala on the western shores

she came and bore witness

to the crucifixation of Christ

and to his resurrection,

here was a woman of belief

Named Mary and then Mary Magdalene

she was not the sinner woman

some would have you believe,

possessed by the demons of seven,

healed in exorcism by the hand of Jesus

Supporting the ministry of Christ

here was a woman of wealth,

of substance, of compassion,

with no glass ceiling she was marked

first amongst his women followers

The apostle to the apostles

her word of resurrection questioned,

as a woman given as an unreliable witness

the lack of faith of others

did nothing to destroy her own

Mary of Magdalene, image tarnished

condemned by men of papal religion

penitent again by the word of only men,

remembered, celebrated, in many religions,

she did not cast the first stone