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

Tuesday Poem - The Landscape by Mary McCallum

 

 

The Landscape

 

My father serves lunch, lifts

the salad with servers, offers

a dish of olives,

the muted light stroking his

 

hands, head bent as if

in a pew, paler

than I think of him.

On the pergola

 

above, the leaves of the vines

are ecstatic and lime-bright,

a scribble of veins,

tendrils, shadows - a reminder how light

 

both clarifies and complicates -

how a simple landscape of skin, let's say,

can become a whole atlas.

Here the x-ray,

 

there the scan.

The chickens

pant in the hedge.

He chops bread

and chunks of cheese, lays

one on the other

passes it across the table

to my mother,

 

his hand a plate. She's feeling

the heat, longs to be cool

 inside with a book, is looking

up, grateful

for the vines, for the lean of the tree

beside us, its pollen rising rapidly like small fish

in a vertiginous sea.

The olive dish

is passed around again. My father

sweeps crumbs

onto the grass with his hand. (He asks

the surgeon now and then, 'When it comes

again how will I know?') All this

light and still the incomprehensible

scrabble of things,

dark scribbles

that dim

the bright falling. Above,

the sky's open palm,

supplicating leaves.

 

 

While I was in NZ, staying out at Eastbourne with Mary and her family, rejoicing in  the view of Makaro Island, she gave me a copy (number 59/100) of her amazing little book - The Tenderness Of Light. The first book out from her own Makaro Press. 

Oh well - it is just a little stunner. One of the poems - After Reading Auden - won the Caselberg Prize two years ago.. 

Bad luck for you, the book is all sold out. But I have a copy - number 59.

I chose The Landscape because of its tenderness, because of its light.

Details about the book: http://www.mary-mccallum.blogspot.co.nz/2012/03/tuesday-poem-tenderness-of-light-my-new.html

Youtube reading here: http://youtu.be/fYQmikKpT0I

Tuesday Poem - Blood Love by Coral Carter

Blood Love

I met my cousin

on Wilson Street

at 16 he dived

into a rock

did time in a chair

now walks with a stick

feet twisted out

like Charlie Chaplin

but no one is laughing

we met last

at uncle’s wake

the ghost of our grandmother came

cursed as she poured the whisky

down the drain

the girl cousins

sang sad movies in their underwear

our cousin broke down

said we didn’t love him

we said

blood love

is deep and red

it stains

that was before another cousin

wrestled him to the ground

in front of 36 Varden Street

to take his keys

not that he had a driver’s licence anyway

we rang a taxi and sent him home

we remembered his father

who won the lottery

drank 12 longnecks a night

until his brain dissolved

my cousin doesn’t drink too much now

he has given up on women

they drove him to it

happier alone

his daughter – up north

his sister – round three with cancer

he wears the Aboriginal colours on his wrist

a twenty year old hat

black jeans skinny legs

I met my cousin on Wilson Street

not the kind of bloke

some would want to meet

but

blood love

is deep and red

it stains.

Here is a poem from Coral Carter’s new book – Descended From Thieves – which she just launched in Melbourne (with my book Ungainly) and in Port Augusta. I think there are launches coming up soon in Kalgoorlie, where Coral lives, and in Perth. As Coral said – “Everyone wants the free wine.” Or something very like that.

http://www.mullamullapress.com/

Tuesday Poem - A Night At The Theatre by Jennifer Compton

A Night At The Theatre

The play was bad.

The set was bad.

The actors were very bad.

The directing was bad.

The lighting was bad.

The sound was bad.

I wanted to leave at the interval

but my husband said — No, it's rude.

The supper? The supper was good.

Here is a little poem from my new little book - 'Ungainly' (Mulla Mulla Press). I am still reeling from an amazing double launch with Coral Carter's 'Descended From Thieves' (Mulla Mulla Press) at Collected Works in Melbourne. 

'Ungainly' is a little jeu d'esprit, a tiny drama, a wee farouche farrago.

Warning - Contains Traces Of Tobacco.