Plantation

Open, closed,
wide spaces
closely focused trees
they stretch to sky
in singular array --
the pinegrove raised to fall
    to chop
      to hack
        to saw
          and grind
            and hit
              and pound
                and pierce
                  and build --

                        created beauty
                        From the violent end
                        of regal pine-tree flesh.

Nicotine

       It curls
      It floats -
     The smoky haze -
   It billows out her lips
  In sweetened scent
 and hangs in air, distraught,
Perhaps destroying, yet relaxing.
   She is aware of what it cost.
       She knows of those -- of some
           Who've paid the price
                 of pleasure.
                       "worth the pain," she claims,
                                             Sucking in
                                                     coughing,
                                                              breathing,
                                                                       Dying without need-
                                                                       Enjoying every breath.

Last Call

A wilting hand extends a blue reward,
as cracking voice floats o'er the oaken bench.
"A pot of Carlton sir," he asks, "the change
is yours; I've little need for silver'nd gold."

A youngster pulls the tap in frothy gold --
Behind him, pretty lass collecting drinks;
Tequila for another customer
Whose stronger gut can stand the fiery blaze

A weary gaze surveys the benches top
as aching eyes drink in the chilling brew
The wilting hand extends again and pulls
the glass to broken lips and drowns its voice

"Tomorrow, ask for me and you will find
that I've become a grave man" he says.
"Mercutio was ne'er as sad as I,
though Romeo may understand the line."

"Do tell?" asks younger barman as he pours
a glass of Jack infused with darkened coke.
"Your bourbon sir," he says aside and slides
the glass on oak towards a suited man.

The broken olden-timer sighs again,
and downs a final sip of Carlton's draught.
"She passed us by at last, and waking disappoints.
A shot of Jack here, cobber, please."

The night extends past final call and wizened
Older man sets foot on rain-washed street.
His greying hair and unshaved cheek are slicked
with winter cold and frost and wet, as lights

from cars on mainstreet shed to view his shape --
Too late. The rubber screech and slide and thud
so sickly renders psychic truth to life
and forces death, untimely, yet in time.

Our Place

It's our place, but you don't even know
Her quiet warmth, it harbours me
When hopeless pain becomes a mask
And unknown thoughts flow down the creek

Like the tree wherein I carved
Her name and mine three years apart
My heart betrays the stilted marks.
Where bark has fallen -- the lines remain.

And like the tree, I'll ne'er forget
The star-crossed hopes and dreams I shared;
The single heart, the only one.
The girl who meant the world to me

The cause of salt-drenched wandering
And bargaining with God on high
But I, I know in time she'll pass
And sink again beneath the bark

Ten years from now, with wife and child,
I can't expect to be content
But equalness in love is prime
What's good for her, I understand

Maryknoll in June

(for A. M. Grace)

Electric lights can barely pierce the mist;
Precipitation masking wholesomeness.
The streets of town, the Virgin's holy ground,
her streets, her shops and church and park and homes

A deer bolts across my path, still masked
in gloom. I pause to think - "Escapee deer
from where on earth was your abode, and why
do you now disrupt my peace?" The rain falls on

and on and on and my disjointed steps
progress again -- the cemetery nigh.
The bitter wind, the pin-prick drops of doom
That fall on howling winter's night
in Maryknoll in June.

The Yellow Rose

(for K. McCracken)

Ten roses rest in two pale hands,
and two pale hands surround the stems.
The stems will stretch to beautiful end,
with scented petals in golden tint.

The golden tint reflects the light
From lovely face and gentle heart;
Both elements of which I'm proud
To call you "friend"; a yellow rose

Mt. Bischoff Mine

(for A. Groza)

We clambered over auburn rocks,
avoiding trips and breaking falls
whilst contemplating  silver veins
That may still lie beneath the hill

We traveled back e'er we'd gone far,
as cloaking night exhumed the light
and ne'er did we approach again
that ancient mine, whose oxide slopes

and sparsely vegetated hills
will, to this day, my thoughts entrap

Spirit

Twenty-Oh-Four; the year of change
In June the sea wind blows my hair
Pale frost-flakes ride on air through salty
Spray and stinging sea-tang

The ocean scent of Bass Strait
Fills my land-bound nostrils, set
From Melborne's port to southern land,
To Devonport, Tasmania.

Sonnet II

I'd sieze her pain if possible to sieze,
For tears on her sweet pailing cheek do cause
Distress within, and I would cross the seas
To heal her broken heart in all its flaws.
For broken though her heart may be inside,
She lets it rest behind her blazing eyes
which pierce in cyan elegence; reside
against the purest porcelain skin, disguised
as sapphire pools of clearest beauty mild.
For she is beautiful inside and out,
From curling ebon locks to passions wild.
Yet I do fear my heart is thrown about.
    Her gentle warmth contains my fullest thought
    For all my energies, I'm left with nought

The Song of Myndie

My father shared us history
Of times he'd spent, in ages past
(Or so it seemed to my young ears),
Upon this lake with grandfather

      Back in those days, the shore was high,
      And boats would float on deeper depths,
      before the drought had caught our land
      in scorching, parching, deathly grip

For now the shoreline sits below
the jutting peers in lake-side gardens
and trees, now rotted, once submersed
are visible once more above

the echo of a former lake.
      A child's eye surveyed the mud,
      the rotting stumps a-crawl with bugs,
      the rusted iron scraps and junk.

      What former beauty was her skin?
      What tales untold of ancient times?
      What settlers laid the first pale eyes
      upon the land newly revealed?

      What tribe did dwell here e'er the dam
      was built to flood the opening?
      What spirit guardians of life
      presided here primævally?

Yet children ne'er could read the signs,
or know to question or to find
The answers hidden beneath the lake
Now fresh laid bare in whithering heat

The crippled rainfall had left its toll
On man's once proud and scarring hole
Perhaps in answer to the grief
enforced by pale and arrogant hands

For once I was a careless child,
Un-used to understand the truth
Of cause, effect, the acts of man
and how and why some things are done

But now I understand the pain.
I feel the evil that seethes within
The heart of every single man
who to the Occident is bound.

In name, it was the Taungurong
Who walked the Goulburn Valley's paths
Who spoke in tongues uncannily
Of one named Myndie -- Rainbow Serpent

Ridges, mountains, gorges formed
and waterholes, and he tended to.
Perhaps the Taungurong were wise
and knew the path to aqua-ease?


    A child walked back 
      to his house
         and spied a stump 
           ('twas once a tree).
             And set therein  
               the child did see
                  a rusted shank 
                    thrust deep with force
                      had split into 
                        the aching wood
                           whose timber then 
                              had set the space
                                 aside to let 
                                   the metal rest
                                      and serenely skew  
                                         the wholesomeness

      This child was I, and I saw fit
      To leave it be, in humour wrought.
      But had I stopped, to stop and think
      perhaps a life might have been bought.

Mountain Road

Frosted mountain-trail, be-misted heights.
As child steps from the safety of his vehicle
into the cold and fresh forest air
A sight creeps into sleep-shod view

The asphalt scar cannot detain her beauty --
The wonder of the outside world, whose mist
enraptures soul while sheathing mountain trees
in white -- those eucalypts that stretch into the sky.

Seen as horizontal shapes that peak
so barely through the filmy veil of grey.
And yet below precipitation's cloak,
Floral towers oft are struck with axe.

Yet children's eyes are shielded from the plight
of lumberjacks and sawmills down below,
Hidden far from Eildon's road and youthful eyes
that see, but do not see, and will not see

Until the lines of age are wrought, and cheeks
are set with manly light, and eyes are
drowned and seasoned with salt, and heart
has known of ache and pain --

Until that time, will see, but will not see.
Life's tempering flame will forge him strong,
And then, and only then will clarity ensue
When child is grown to man, finally he'll understand

The Eagle's Nest

The rocky crest sat far from here
A nest for seabirds; birds of prey
Who'd rest in its squat loneliness
The cove bedecked with freckling stone

Or so we thought -- a myth of name
'Tis "Eagle's Nest" near Inverloch
and child-like footsteps climbed the crest
to search for hooked beak and claw

The lofty rock-nest stretched to sky
Yet though some made it up on high,
The moon, it pulled the weary tide
And fear of deep-blue depths came down

And so did I -- intrepid as I was,
and to this day have made no attempt
to climb the nest, whose hoary sides
did speak delight and unknown charm

Six Limericks

1.

I once met an old schizophrenic
Whose mood was quite awfully manic
He said "look at me!"
As he thought he's a bee
But really was far too frenetic

2.
A supercilious rambunctious idiot
One day had a cup, and he filled it
Up to the brim
With a serious grin
And he said "oh my God, I have spill-ed it!"

3.
There once was a beautiful lady,
Whose sister gave birth to a baby

She said "what the hell
Is that godawful smell?"

When she knew that the smell was the baby!


4.
I once knew am old bum from Perth
Whose only bed was the earth
That beneath him was set,
And the worms were his pets
That unfortunate old bum from Perth.


5.
My mum had a baby named Gareth
Who never could quiet pronounce "carrot"
As hard as he tried,
His tongue always tied
Itself and he'd have to say "carroth"

6.
There was an old geezer named Caesar
Who's wife, he would never believe her
Each day that she tried,
At dinner, she cried
But still he would always bereave her.

Of Cynical Love

It was an empty word,
A softly-breathed request
A plee for help oft-envoked
And the sparkle in her eye to light the steady gloom

Woman's words a snare
To capture my heart
To lift me high, and when all is well
To break me against life's flow

What folly take the heart of man,
That he should all sense forgo?

The steady-beating, still bleeding heart
answers its own with one more potent
In all that it forgets

Is all life's joy worth each stagnant drop
of death's quiet, lonesome doom?

Each Step, She Steps

Each step, she steps to rosey, perfumed heights.
My beating heart she takes, and I, I wait.
For waiting, inadvertently some nights
Doth render sleep into surrendered hate.
And yet in all that hate doth bring to me,
I find I can'st forget, withall, that love
Which doth ensnare the beating of my heart -
Sequestered into silence at thy sight

For in thine eyes, thy sky-blue pools of light
I find in breathing, breath cessates, and I
In abject misery may feel the fight
Between propriety and love. But thou
hast ensnared me, caught up within
The loosely curling locks that by thy
Heaven-blessed aspect hath been set
To conquer, like a rose, my sullen heart.

That I - as broken as my life must seem -
May be in company with thee, is but a dream.