My Late Adopted Brother

Bulky, deep-voiced, bushy-bearded,

smoker (both kinds) 

acquainted with drink.

How could he be an angel? 

Thus: 
           deep down 

a gentle, gentle soul

(words of a mourner

on facebook); the kindest, 

sensitive, most creative … 

deepest feelings (another);

his musical gift; and the way

he always had my back.

I like to think of him

pleasantly surprised,

finding himself there;

can well imagine he’d choose

to stay now, not come back

for another turn on the wheel.

Adios, Bro!



[Poem #106]

I'm sharing this one at the latest Tuesday Platform at 'imaginary garden with real toads', and at Poets United's Poetry Pantry #485.

Writers' group: Nan

Nan is the wicked one

who surprises newcomers 

whenever she reads.

It's not that she uses 

naughty words, or blasphemes;

it's her thoughts that are naughty,

her soul that's irreverent.

(More truly reverent 

than many a churchgoer,

she likes the Lord — she's just

not in awe. Her humorous tales

are in fact moral fables.)

And she's the effortless 

prize-winner:
in competitions always 

commended at least.

Underneath it all,

she appreciates

loving-kindness.



[Poem #102]

Writers' group: Anne

I once told her

I thought she'd write something

important one day,

or at least that she could.

Did that make her fearful,

give her too much

to begin to live up to? 

For months after that 

she found no words to write.

We missed her acerbic wit.

But she kept coming,

listened as others read,

offered feedback.

Then sudden fantastic beings 

poured across her page, strangers

revealing themselves

to her fascinated scribe.



[Poem #101]

Writers' group: Helen

Her smile is always

the first thing I see

as she enters the room.

She exudes a cosy kindness that belies 

the cool, precise, administrative intellect.

Now she is all about family.

When she can't come, it's because

she is baby-sitting grandchildren

(not the only one to do that, but

the one who does it most often).

And she writes about family,

exploring generations past

whose lives enthral like an epic novel.



[Poem #100]

Writers' group: Hebe

She's like some cousin

I never knew I had.

Indeed, in my youth,

unsuspected cousins migrated

from her land to mine.

The Anglo-Indian connection

Mum kept secret.

Her father's Scottish complexion

allowed that, and my Dad's

English heritage.

The dark I longed for

died with Nana, she

more Indian than Anglo;

that warmth....

Hebe arrives –

childhood stories

that might have been mine

had the family stayed

there: not Tasmania.

And, that warmth.



[Poem #99]

Writers' group: Eddie

Insists he believes in nothing;

really believes that. Can argue

in support of this position.

Is not vehement against

other people's beliefs,

simply adamant

that he himself has none.

He likes hot climates,

dark-haired women,

and playing guitar.

Arthritis cut the music.

We older women, and Eddie, 

gather weekly to write,

learning each other,

building mateship.

A friend, meeting him, remarks,

'He is at ease with quiet.

That's rare in a man.'



[Poem #98]

Writers' group: Cheryl

How can I fit her into

seventy-three words?

She'll think I mean

her physical abundance,

but no. It's her bigness 

of spirit — 

                   ready

with tears or laughter,

vocal with passionate rage,

quick to hug me

if ever I'm sad.

She faced down death

with prayer

and black humour

stays alive

in green pastures

with a man she loves

beyond reason

(and sundry pets ditto)

as a writer

fears no confrontation ... 

remembers singing.



[Poem #97]

Writers' Group: Jean

Jean is new to the writing group.

She fits right in at once.

I'm glad to be joined by another 

poet. (It gets lonely.)

After her first session, 

she asks, 'Will you have me?'

Our question is, will she 

have us? Yes! She comes back.

Retired English teacher,

good proof-reader, witty, polite ...

When I read my widowhood poems

she understands exactly.

I see her getting every word,

feeling them. Oh, she knows!



[Poem #96]

Writers' Group: Bron

Bronwyn has a lover,

likes to say it, likes the word.

She likes to play with words —

sensual, musical, 

shaping stories;

likes to write of deserts

of foreign landscapes, and 

the interior space of the mind; 

by inference the heart.

Her own heart is with the sea

and hints of tribal secrets;

makes of them poems.

In a friend's house I admired 

a sketch, a graceful nude.

She told me, 'Bron did that.'



[Poem #95]

Launceston Girls

My Mum saw her sobbing backstage
after the elocution competitions —
second to my first. We were eight.

Grew up in the same suburb,
came to each other’s birthday parties,
attended High School together.

Thirty years later, surprise:
reunion onstage in another city,
reciting our own works.

Awhile inhabited the same
publications, venues, academies.
Supported each other, allies.

Went different ways again:
fiction her love, poetry mine —
rivalry, like childhood, past.



Cross-posted from my poetry blog The Passionate Crone, where it appears as: 30 Poems in 30 Days, 2010: 12 (Prompt: A poem about a rivalry)

[Poem #88]

Her Name Was ...

She was on MySpace
friend of friends.
We wanted to be
real friends not just listed;
but....

The poem she wrote at 10
thrilled me —
its rhythms,
its message,
its everything: perfect.
I praised, she dismissed.

The adult work
I couldn’t like.
All intellectual
wordplay, I thought,
clever for the sake.
Others admired, enthused;
the fault, no doubt, was mine.

Suddenly she’s gone.
Don’t even
remember her last name.
(Sad.)



[Poem #87]

Festival Poet

Hurtled downstairs
into my arms.
‘Where are you reading next?’

Three old fellows
fawning around her
shrivelled. She
was oblivious. (Fools
hadn’t seen her with beautiful
young man earlier,
dark to her ash-blonde.)

First night I heard her,
advised quietly:
‘Don’t apologise.
Your words are good.’
She nodded wide-eyed.

I was celebrity guest,
she was starting.
Four years later
she enchants children
(poetry as magick)

is Festival Director.



[Poem #85]

Expatriate Blogger

I 'met' her in her adopted city
turning the pain of her broken heart
into prose-poems that seared mine.
I thought them beautiful fictions,
then realised only truth
was that raw, that passionate.

She needed to leave the man,
his country and his family, all loved.
She needed her old home.
Returned, she lives in my adopted city
(I’m elsewhere now; we’ve never met)
begins writing new, beautiful ... fictions?



[Poem #76]

The Marine Biologist's Mother

News: a suicide
far across the world.
I didn’t know him.
But I remember
his mother’s words:
‘O golden child
the world will kill and eat.’

It ate her first.
She never saw him grow
so like his father.

Didn’t know her either –
but through her poems
we think we know.

‘Famous because of scandal’
the know-alls say.
Perhaps.
But loved for her words,
beauty and passion
living on.



[Poem #64]

Occupation, Poet

Disappeared three days
after high-grade grass,

just wandered off
into the dark.

But mostly drunk and rude.
Forgiven for talent.

‘Soul of an accountant,’ remarked
the portraitist, painting that.

Mistook me once
for acquiescent. Disabused.

Poetry was blood and breath.
His words could sing or kill.

Moved, seeking the son
abandoned years earlier.

I came across his elegy
for the young man's drug-death,

telling their whole story
honestly ... wept.



[Poem #63]

Ursula Le Guin

A Wizard of Earthsea
was my first fantasy novel
(Alice more classic than genre;
and, not raised on Narnia,
that still unread).
Ursula, it was you
who gave me this way
of entering dream and dimensions:
writing with grace and wit,
imparting the ways of magick,
moral dilemmas, growth.
I was very young,
though not so young as your hero.
He — you — taught me
how to develop character.



[Poem #57]

Canadian Poet

Pearly girlie plays with words,
sounds, meanings, structures
and arrives at intriguing
revelations or conundrums
that always go deeper
than you might first expect.

Work different from mine,
which is plainer.

I don’t have to be the same
to appreciate the juicy flesh
of a poem bitten into and tasted –
thrilling to its savour, inhaling
the lingering memory,
running my tongue again and again
over satisfying texture.



[Poem #55]

Prisoner Poet 3: The Suicide

After 26 years and more,
more years than your life,

I can remember you
with joy exceeding sorrow –
though, as The Prophet suggested,
they’re sides of one coin:

always some tears,
a swift pang.

When your death was recent,
it was anguish to notice young fun –
pinball machines, amusement parks –
you might have enjoyed

if not for a youth in prison,
if not for your final escape.



[Poem #54]

At the Book Fair

At the book fair
for self-published authors

my table was next to hers.
Happenstance?

We hardly stopped
talking and laughing.

She’d written her own
spiritual adventure

prose shining like poetry
in a hall of atrocious verse.

She was Crone, skinny 81,
wool cap around her ears

a light festoon of grey curls
embroidering her chin.

Age, she understood,
had made her whole.

We were sisters at once,
magickal.



[Poem #51]

She Read Her Poem

I was lost in the beautiful words,
drifting away on them;
did wonder vaguely at a subject
with resemblances to me –
but only when others
asked, 'Did you like that?'
I emerged from reverie.
'It’s about you,' they said.

Lean, vigorous, white-haired,
she rode motorbikes in Thailand;
makes poems that experiment
with sounds, images, meanings:
witty, metaphorical, deep poems;
sometimes poems so lovely
I lose myself, carried away.



[Poem #47]