Tuesday Poem - Boys Own Annual by Rhyll McMaster

Boys Own Annual

What a shame

girls aren't more like boys.

Girls want to change the rules.

What a shame

they don't ever play the game.

In a Boys Own Annual view of life

the punch, the grab, the shout are haute couture.

The moon-about is paramount.

Boys need never realise, need not be clever.

Boys need not mature.

Girls don hats and gloves their mothers wore

and play at Houses under trees.

Girls are bossy.

They seem to like responsibilities,

don't love the mystery of scraped knees.

Boys like the smell and sometimes-touch of boys,

their stop-start world, well-debated challenges,

hatched plans never carried out,

the detached stare.

Boys like it when they never have to care.

Boys know girls are the enemy

because girls keep calling in the debt.

Girls block the light that's shining

straight down on Boys Own Mighty Heaven,

that glazed place where time's ephemeral, yet set

where boys can rest their case

without entering a plea

and wander home at sunset

for their tea.

This poem is from Rhyll's newest book – Late Night Shopping – published by Brandl & Schlesinger. The book is such a delight. Sharp and funny and eloquent.

http://brandl.com.au/recent-titles/late-night-shopping

Tuesday Poem - Two Short Poems by Luke Beesley

Peacock peacock

In Tagore's last poems he imagines words popped of

    meaning

loose, in the sky, nonsense syllables, pure colour

At the post office I watch a man for an hour

sew my parcels with a large needle

a purple full stop on his thumb

I never saw the Taj Mahal.

             I write I never saw the Taj Mahal

             but write 'sew' instead of 'saw'

             I never sew

Short story

His ear lit up like a daffodil

He found four bees in his car

It was a leap year. February rushed

past like formula one

a twist of tomato

in the alcohol

Luke Beesley lives in Melbourne. These insidious little poems are in his recent book 'Balance” from Whitmore Press.

http://whitmorepress.wordpress.com/

Tuesday Poem - In The Voice Of A Tree by Michelle Leber

IN THE VOICE OF A TREE

for Georgina King (1845-1932)

Do not marry if you wish to develop your talent

                                                          ― George Bennett

Her warm curve on my spine―

it’s like this each day. She’s reading

with her little sighs, pressing a book

to her hillocks, as if absorbing my ancestors

by way of brooding osmosis.

No one knows what she reads.

Some days she writes letters,

packing faultless flowers between paper

and lets the laughing dove take them

across meadows, over mountains,

to enter Mueller’s chamber as he sits

with Termination Lake specimens

in the drafty acreage of his esteem. 

No one knows what he reads.

A dandelion seed has taken sentry

in her hair. For the view. For companionship.

Ants devising better ways to reach honey,

by-pass the flighty blooms of her sleeve

that puff like batwings onto her page.

No one knows what she reads.

If I could, I’d insist she reconcile

her natural beauty. When her head

turns to a bee, rises on its tower to meet

with clouds, she is more than kindred:

how shall we commune, together admire

our mandate with petalite, tuff beds, fern allies.

I am bending my branches.

No one knows what she reads.

Note: First published in a different form by Westerly 57.2: Nov 2012 

  

Michelle Leber lives in Melbourne and is writing a series of poems about women naturalists. Each one I come across, either in journals, or when she reads them to us at various poetry events around town, or when she tables one at a monthly workshop at my place, I am entranced by their delicacy and pungency and cogency.

Tuesday Poem - Promise of Storms by Graham Nunn

Promise of Storms

Always, in the late afternoon,
when the air is rusty with wattle blooms
the town gathers in its quietest corner

lining the road like a mob of roos.
In the front, women's knees flash
like winter apples split in half

between skirts and stockings
and men lean their arms against the coffin
ever so gently.

With their free arms
they brush pollen from black suits
clothes worn only for weddings and funerals.

And later that night they hang them
to be cleaned with vinegar and brush
unsure as to when they will be worn again.

I wonder what remains
after a small town funeral?
Not much hope, not much longing.

Maybe only pollen and the promise
of a storm, carrying its blessing
of new growth.

I came upon this poem in the latest issue of FourW and liked it a lot. In fact there is a lot of 

great stuff in the latest issue of FourW.

Graham lives in Brisbane and is currently raising funds for an indigenous literacy programme 

which is sorely needed. Sad but true. Check it out on his blog - Another Lost Shark 

http://anotherlostshark.com/2012/12/02/hands-up-for-indigenous-literacy/

Tuesday Poem - The ngaio tree by Fiona Kidman

The ngaio tree

“..we leave best what we have truly loved.”

                                     Lauris Edmond

So here come the kids, skidding their school bags

across the floor, blazers flung awry on the chairs,

                                                     two grandsons

of which there are five brothers in all.

‘We’ve had exams today,’ they say, exasperated,

 ‘And we had to do that poem, the one you wrote

about Dad’s tree-house in the ngaio. We knew

we’d get it sooner or later. Toby said so,

                                                       and Reuben too.’

‘So what did they ask you?’

‘Oh you know, stuff about what does the poem mean?’

                                                       ‘And you said?’

I’m focusing on the hot chocolate now,

                             pouring it into two mugs.

‘That our Dad had a tree-house and you used to yell

 at him to come down when it got dark and raining.’

‘Nothing about bad dreams and conquering fear?’

                                                       One of them sighs.

‘Teachers don’t know our Dad. Our dad’s our dad.’

That’s true enough, more that than my son anymore

and besides, the meaning of the wretched poem

 has shifted.                            The red-headed woodsman

shakes his head regularly over the fragile

branches, the thin screen of foliage,

the tree’s increasing vulnerability

as another gale sweeps in scattering dry twigs

                                                     ribbons in the sky.

‘Don’t know how much more it can take,’ he says,

                                            laconic, commiserating.

          

           

But there are some things I do know:

 if we stand on the lawn beneath that tree

we see far beyond us dark fires of sunsets

settling over the bay, pastel new moons

cavorting across the sky, the delphinium

days of summer,  mists resting in the far

 hills like the foothills of the Himalayas

and yes the dark scribbles of the tree’s branches

against stormy skies, even though the boy came down

                                                     from the tree long ago

There is all this and more. At some time

or another, every person I have truly loved,

our close family circle, the aunts

                         (save Roberta who never made it here),

 the old old companions of my childhood,

                                                    all the true friends

 have stood beneath this tree.

                                 And I tell myself

 that, so long as I live, if the roots hold

 fast to the bank below and new green shoots

 appear on the branches each spring, all will be 

                                                   as well as it can.

Another wonderful poem from Fiona Kidman’s recent book Where Your Left Hand 
Rests published by Godwit, Random House. It is a most enticing little book, a gift.

http://www.randomhouse.co.nz/Book_Display_46.aspx?CategoryId=14&ProductId=593169