Remember

First published at Silver Birch Press

Somewhere there are dark clouds.
Somewhere the oppressor grief adds his heavy weights.
Somewhere there is war, or struggle, or suffering.

But not here.

Here you can see the mild sun
shining in a cloudless sky.
The moving river seems perfectly still,
filled with floating reflections.
A man from long ago
reclines on the sand, a rod in his hand,
although he doesn't care if nothing bites,
and a little fair-haired boy, his youngest,
kneels near him laughing in pure childish delight.

Let me fill in some things you cannot see.
To the right is the boulder-made breakwater
where the river empties into the incessant sea.
To the left a little fleet of trawlers
sits quietly moored to a jetty.
Hidden too but fixed in memory
and fundamental to the scene
are his other children, playing in the sand,
laughing and splashing in the shallow water.

Hidden too is the woman, his wife,
who seeing the moment and capturing it, said:

Here. Take this gift and carry it with you.
See what joy is.
Know how it is made of small, inconsequential moments.
Cherish it. Always remember,
no matter what comes or what clouds descend,

this still blue day,
lying on this sand, rod in hand
while the children splash and play.

Summer with Jean.

Every summer I went to Jean's.
The dunes between her house and the sea
were wild and thick with banksia and honey eaters.
"Be careful of the death adders," was the constant warning.
To the right a kilometre away was the little fishing village-
breakwater, river, fleet of trawlers moored at the jetty,
Johnny's milk bar and pin ball machines.
To the left the crescent beach curved away uninterrupted
into the distant horizon,
just the waves and sand and the occasional fisherman
standing shin deep in the ebb and flow.

It was a miraculous place
but it was Jean herself who drew me back.
My mother's sister, widowed young,
her only child dead in infancy,
somehow she triumphed in generosity,
larger than life, full of good humour,
never anything else but interesting.
Impossible to separate in my mind
the place from the big-hearted woman.
She was the place and the place was her.

More than fifty summers came and went,
summers where I eventually took my own children
to the place of my young life,
saw them too grow to love Jean,
watched them delight in all my old joys.

But time was the tide
in which we were caught.
My children grew.
Jean grew old.
Then frail.
Then she died.

Impossible to ever return.
The village was the same.
The same waves still crashed on the same sand.
The same white sand stretched endlessly into the horizon.
Solitary fisherman still stood knee deep in the waves.
But it could never be the same again.

Except, in memory, perfect and retained,
I still see her in the garden,
sit with her in the cool of the afternoon
and hear, with her,
the eternal sound of the sea
thumping on the sand
and then,

slowly,
its long
aching,
withdraw.

Tim and me, fishing in the Evans River, Evans Head, 1982.

Aunty Jean with Dan, Cathy, Tim and Ben, 1982.

See

See how
on this rainy day
the honeysuckle
dresses in cream and gold

and how
on frosty mornings
the humble wattle displays
her summery-yellow sprays

or how
through the gloom
of grey cloud's cluster
the sun pokes his bright toe

and hope that,
in whatever darkness,
come splashes of yellow and gold
and descending columns of light.

This Passing Day (revised)

This Passing Day.

It seems to me that the brittle-bright morning
when we first loved
was a glistening shimmer of dew drop.
All the world's wealth was ours.
Time seemed held in fragile crystal stop.

Now it is late afternoon.
The sky is still clear and the sinking sun
more intensely beautiful than it was long ago.
Who can know if night will suddenly fall
or day stretch on past midnight
in muted, dimming, surreal twilight.

No matter. Each transient moment is rich with joy
and passing time has been our strange friend,
gifting us a plaited golden cord that twists and entwines,
tying us richly to each other
and to the present, past and unknowable future.

So come, take my hand.
That fragile morning is long gone.
Evening must fall but the stars promise light.
We have lived and loved together,
shared in glory throughout the long passing day.
Is this not enough? It must be enough.
It is much more than enough.

The Earth Speaks

When I walked beside the magnificent Aletsch Glacier in Switzerland, saw how much it had retreated, read about the speed with which this is happening, heard the glib pronouncements from  politicians, I was moved by the idea of how exploitative we humans are and our need to act to protect the earth, the only home we will ever have. This poem and its abusive metaphor is the result.

The Earth Speaks.

I gave you all, said "Come, lie with me,
on me, in me, by me, through me,
gaze upon me, caress me.
I give you life and beauty too-
all I have is yours to share
but please place me gently in your care."

But you have torn my garments,
stolen my jewels, scarred my face,
besmeared and besmirched my skin,
groped and gouged my secret parts-
your rule, cruel, your treatment, rough,
so insatiable you can never get enough.

I writhe and cry out in protest.
I heave and crack,
send mighty tempests.
I stop the rain.
I send parching heat.
I must struggle and strive
and cry for help.

I plead too, say,
"Come, repent, be my friend,
be tender, gentle, make amends,
it is not yet too late to start again.
Think for a moment of the future.
Those children left will bemoan your folly,
and, despairing about their hope and fate,
curse your abusive misrule,
and you for being a short-sighted fool."

O can we not live together?
I give you life and beauty.
Can you then not care for me,
love me, work with me
or must I, at last, finally, regretfully,
in deepest sorrow
turn my back and put you out?

A Vision or a Dream.

In vision or dream
I saw a man in Dachau
give his last morsel of bread
to one he thought was suffering more.
I heard his thoughts.
"I am no mere plaything of circumstance.
They can take my life but not
the freedom to choose my way."

I rushed to tell my friends
that choice determines who we are,
proof sufficient being in Dachau
a man chose compassion over self.

One friend replied:
"Noble indeed is such a one.
Heroes make these choices.
The exception though is not the rule.
Choice is circumscribed
by circumstance
and eliminated for most by horror of place."

Another then spoke:
"Oppression's boot can find the weight
To crush all choice away.
Was that man's compassion
an act of choice?
I rather think it a gift of grace."

A strange and diverse parade
then passed by
following the banner "Choice",
surprisingly small in number,
privileged ones all sleek and well fed-
warriors, warmongers and kings,
artists, writers, scientists,
simple honest folk and villainous ones too.

Then the next parade came in view
following the banner "No Choice"
and they passed by for days.
I wept to see
starving children shuffling by,
eyes bereft of hope-
women marching on and on,
slaves, bruised and beaten, acid scarred,
child brides, circumcised, mutilated,
disempowered, exploited, disenfranchised-
multitudes of poor,
their every choice dictated by need-
the tortured, guiltless and cruelly oppressed-
lastly, the largest throng,
billions with crippling chains forged
deeply inside their minds,
limited thoughts conditioned
entirely by place.
"Is there no-one to set them free?"
I groaned in tears,
until at last in blessed relief
the world went dark
and I could see and weep no more.

In the dark
a voice came softly speaking
words I had heard before.
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.
He has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's  favour.”
I cried aloud in answer
"How could this ever be?
How can these captives be set free?
How can the blind be given sight?
How can the oppressed have liberty?
Can there ever be equity?
What the day? What the extent?
What the arm? What the method?
What the power? What the man?
What the promised liberty?"

I awoke suddenly from my dream
in sober, shaken state.
Could so many be choice-less bound?
What of this hope
that chains will be removed?
Can humanity achieve this on our own?
and determining the answer to be "No",
(yet desiring all chains to go)
considered then my choice must be
to surrender in prayer to the hope
that chains be loosed,
and since compassion is a gift of grace,
my choice must also be
to pray that such grace comes to me
so that I too can,
in shared humanity,
offer my last morsel of bread
to those who need it more.

Caravaggio's St John the Baptist.

After the relentless repetition
of Annunciation, Nativity and Crucifixion,
the sadistic scenes of Last Judgment,
their florid, cruel sensuality,

their crowded, muscular nakedness;

after the ornate splendour of palaces
covered from wall to ceiling

in blue, gold and red,
depictions of battle, death and victory
or violent, Biblical narrative;

after these you walk down a darkened crypt,
past fading depictions of gospel scenes,
your mind numb from days of surfeit
and suddenly there it is,

Caravaggio's "St. John the Baptist",

not a prophet from the Judean wilderness
with fiery, uncompromising words
but a slender youth
rendered in exquisite truthfulness.

His skin is luminously beautiful.
The light, from the left, touches him
on cheekbone, shoulder, thigh, knee, calf.
The lines, composition and colour are masterful
but its real wonder is its truthfulness.
He turns from his simple shepherd's task
as if you've suddenly surprised him,
a complex mixture
of amusement, confidence and shyness,

a friendly, joyous gaze,
as if the nuance of his mind
in this single, fleeting moment
has been caught in Caravaggio's brush
and effortlessly placed upon the canvas
so we, who come to it after so many centuries,
can be transfixed by its beauty and truth
and be privileged by the momentary glimpse
into the mind of that boy
and the transcendent power that captured it.