Three Kings.

Three Kings.

Three kings of the earth,
seeking wisdom,
met on a mountainside
beside a pool of vision.
They sat for a while and stared
until their respective kingdoms,
in watery reflection,
floated on the still water.

The first saw smoke of war,
limping trudge of amputees,
industrial smudge,
ruined cities,
mudslides covering villages,
rivers thickly stagnant,
shanty town shacks,
rising sea engulfing farming lands
and a dust covered child,
face blankly devoid of hope,
sitting alone in the bombed rubble.

Finally, he spoke.

“We must do better”, he said,
“if there is to be a future.
My role must be service.
Time is short. I must lead my people
into the best sense of what they can be.
Self-interest may be their natural state
but they have potential,
can understand great concepts
like generosity, mercy and compassion,
can act selflessly, can raise their minds
beyond the here and now
into the blue, cloud-flecked sky.
I seek revelation and vision.
My people are sheep.
Where I lead, they will follow.”

The second stared into the water.
Light rain fell on his city.
Neon lights pooled in flouro flare.
Glittering glass buildings
glowed in the night,
crowds linked arms, jostled and laughed.
Then someone staggered from a building
and reeled through the street.
In a darkened, syringe-discarded alley
someone else slumped against a wall.

“All this is mine”, he thought.
“All its wealth is mine.
All these people are foolishly weak.
They are vulnerable and easily manipulated.
I sell the image they desire.
For that they willingly surrender
to me their wealth.”

When the third gazed into the water
there rose to the surface
poised and thrusting missiles,
tanks rumbling over the sand-hills,
mile upon mile of trench
embroidered with twisted, tortured
tangle of body and wire,
armies goosestepping through streets,
refugees in flimsy boats
or imprisoned in detention centres,
the world’s new and bitter gulags.

He laughed. “Fools believe anything.
My persuasive tools are their fear and vanity.
So simple. Feed them this:
‘You are the special ones.
I give you the greatness you merit.
Enemies without would take it from you.
Enemies within would betray you.
Fear all not of your tribe.
Arm yourselves.
Build your walls.
Embrace your flag.
Those who are not for me are against you.’
In speaking thus I embrace my power
and make this people my slaves.”

Then the kings rose and went their separate ways.
Behind them, the great mountain stood darkly stern.
Above them, the mute sky was cloudless.
The pool they left was still and quietly smooth.

First published at Praxis online

A Beam of Light.

Scoff, you cynics,

you observers of the here and now,

but we are only our dreams

so why shouldn’t I,

with prophets and seers,

float out of my darkened window

on a beam of pure light,

soaring high above the swamp and desert

to see, just over the horizon,

a new world rising out of the dark,

that one where justice descends

like the morning dew,

swords are beaten into ploughshares

and peace, like a mantle,

covers the glistening earth.

First published at One Sentence Poetry

Turned and Gone Away.

This one explores a complex kind of sadness. I suppose it is a lament.

Turned and Gone Away.

For my loved sister, Jean.

Your house,

gripped by flood,

floats from its foundations,

sinking ever lower.

You sit on the roof.

I cry out to you, 

swim, throw a rope,

beg you to leave

but you can only wring your hands,

turn and float away.

Small and diminished,

you tremble before a precipice

filled with darkness.

I cry out that I understand

your fears of age,

diminished powers, loneliness,

the horror that shuffling dependency

may lead you into actions once unspeakable

but you can only wring your hands,

turn and step away.

In deep denial you reel

from the mirror, truth.

You close your eyes

and cover your ears.

I cry out that I understand 

how time and circumstance have trapped you,

that you have grown far too old for truth,

that you need to pretend you still are

the wonderful person you once were

but you can only wring your hands,

stagger and flee away.

You shuffle

down a long corridor

in the slow and painful way

of your last years.

I cry out that I understand

how extreme age forced you

into secrets, deceptions, 

and, much worse, sad betrayal 

of some you so loved.

I shout I love you and forgive you

but the words echo and bounce 

down the empty corridor.

You have ceased wringing your hands.

You have turned and gone away.

First published at Better Than Starbucks

One Early Morning.

Here is one of my early poems, written when I was about 23.

One Early Morning.

I lie on a large sandstone platform
beneath blue, cloud-flecked sky.
The air is full of cicada song.
The gorge drops steeply away,
past boulders, bright flowers in yellow and red,
smooth, pink barked apple gums,
soar and crack of whipbird.
I know at the bottom
yabbies scurry in clear pools,
fairy wrens flit in dappled shade
and water gurgles and ripples
around green mossy rocks.

Somewhere else, a world away, is a snarl of traffic.
Somewhere else someone blasts their horn.
Somewhere else someone yells abuse.
Somewhere else someone in a suit plots and schemes.
Somewhere else crowds of commuters in dim half-life
sit in trains, eyes blank, faces dully impassive.
Somewhere else pedestrians stand at lights, resigned to the day.

I look across to the other ridge.
The land rises in quick steep climb,
all wind and trees and movement.
As a cicada sheds its exoskeleton
I want to shrug off the past,
let the wind carry away
the relentless search for identity,
the realisation of personal limitation,
misjudgment, mistakes and failures.
I want something better, all-consuming,
beyond the pettiness and triviality
of what we call “ambition”

but for now, for this moment,
I am almost content to lie on this rock
listening to the throbbing ecstasy of cicada song,
watching the scud of cloud and sway of branch,
dreaming and sighing in the sun.

Published at Verse-Virtual.

Me, about the time I wrote this poem.