The Gathering Host

The Gathering Host.


Australia’s jewel is burning.
All along the rugged, mountainous south-west coast
of the island state of Tasmania,
rain-forests, once a tangle of towering trees and vine,
stand dry and vulnerable.
The host has ceased its gathering.
Now it attacks with a roar.
It overpowers the King Billy pines.
It plunders alpine garden and rainforest.
It gathers to scale the Walls of Jerusalem.
Its front line stretches for 1600 kilometres.
What stops it turning towards the populated east,
raging through farmland and city,
burning down to the water
before jumping channels to conquer the islands,
the sapphire splints off the mainland gem?
Only the wind which refuses to blow.
But still, it smoulders in the deep gorges
and blazes through button grass and rainforest.

Northwards, over the vast continent,
the land bakes under 40 C heat.
The Darling River runs dry.
Where only algae blooms in oxygen-deprived ponds, 
a million fish lie belly up and stinking.
Starving roos die of thirst.
Koalas leave the trees in search of moisture.
The land pants and cracks and subsides.
The fear of summer spreads 
as heat wave follows heatwave,
blanketing the inland,
surging over the Great Dividing Range,
oppressing the white sand beaches 
and the curling blue waves.

Still fools wave lumps of coal in Parliament.
Still powerful politicians live in denial.
Still the hollow men 
stuff their headpiece filled with straw 
into their dry cellar.
And I ask this.
Is this the way the world ends?
Is this the way the world ends?
Is this the way the world ends?
Not with a bang.
Nor with a whimper.
But with a mighty conflagration?

-First published in “The Blue Nib”.

Black Cockatoos

Black Cockatoos. 


In dappled light of cathedral forest
a small flock of black cockatoos 
open giant wings to flap so slowly
they seem to float in the air,
uttering as they go a desolate lament 
for creatures gone and habitat lost.
First published in Verse-Virtual July 19

Blue Mountains Grotto

Blue Mountains Grotto.
-for Paul and Sue Armstrong.
We leave the high panorama and descend steeply
past smooth-barked angopheras patterned in pink and grey. 
At the bottom a narrow grotto is embraced 
on three sides by curving sandstone cliffs.
We walk under a low overhang. 
A waterfall, drought-reduced, silvers past 
and ends with musical splash in a clear sandy pool.
Ranks of fern and moss step up the steepness.
Tall coachwoods climb to light in column straightness.
A little creek exits the pool down a rock-filled gully
and where the cliff face ends a single slanting beam 
splashes a patch of startling brilliance 
into the grotto’s deep green shade.

First published in Verse-Virtual July 19

Unnoticed, Come Inside

Unnoticed, Come Inside.


When grim sorrow comes to town,
suitcase filled with pain and grief, 
wearing his heavy, mournful frown,

rapping with his stick to come in, 
spilling all through the house
heartache, tears and suffering,

it is futile to bid him leave.
He must enter and the heart
must sorrow, lament and grieve.

His burden is always hard to bear.
Some hearts, in suffering, break
or dark and bitter fruits appear.

Note, though, the door is open wide
for hope, compassion and empathy
to unnoticed, come inside

and sit waiting for sorrow to depart
so that they can begin to strengthen
the heavily laden, grieving heart,

remaining quietly in the room,
finer things strangely flourishing
from suffering’s pain and gloom.

First published in Verse-Virtual August 19.

Shadows

Shadows.


Shadows are lengthening.
Soon night will descend.
With unwanted haste
this blaze of light will end.

Shadows are lengthening.
Trees stand black and bare.
Beasts awake from slumber.
Crows labour in the air.

Shadows are lengthening.
There's hatred and despair.
The violent and the base lust 
for power everywhere.

Shadows are lengthening.
Old certainties seem to fade.
Is sight diminishing 
or improving with age?

Shadows are lengthening.
Beneath the indigo night
an orange swathe displays
fading ecstasy of light.

Shadows are lengthening.
In the darkness glow
pinpricks of brightness
that only shadows show.

First published in Verse-Virtual August 19

I Wake

I wake 

to the flickering screen’s images 

of desperation and remorse,

the bleak recounting of misdeeds,

lies, greed, corruption,

scenes of anger, partisan politics, accusation,

analysis, implication, expectation, speculation,

but in the blue-sky day outside

the gum trees are in nectar-filled

explosion of blossom 

and the air is filled with flocks 

of beautiful rainbow lorikeets

descending to joyously feast

with their excited chatter

and even the grey friar birds,

dipping their dark heads 

to fill their curved beaks,

sing their strange chokk-chokk-four-o-clock 

in unrestrained, joyous, raucous celebration.

First published in One Sentence Poems

Lament for a Light Horseman.

This poem was first published in Verse-Virtual, February, 2019.

The last great cavalry charge was made by the 4th Australian Light Horse at Beersheba in 1917. My father was only 4 then, but the glamour and myth of the Light Horse remained between the wars and as a young man he joined the Light Horse as part of the Citizens Military Force. When WW II broke out he volunteered for the RAAF and was seconded to the RAF, where he served in 179 Squadron of the Coastal Command, firstly in Gibraltar and then in the UK. 

Lament for a Light Horseman.

-for my father, Reg Creighton, 1913-1981.

How young and dashing you are.

You wear your emu-plumed Light Horseman’s hat.

Your face, in profile, is full of hope.

A little smile flickers on your lips.

Bright confidence covers your face.

You hold her by the bridle throatlatch.

Her mixture of fear and curiosity amuses you.

Her ears are forward. Her eyes stare.

What is it that you whisper?

Don’t worry, Pol, it’s only a camera.

Click! And there you are, for that moment

always young, happy and idealistic.

Perhaps you were just twenty two.

That was before your marriage,

before you left for war,

before you left behind your pregnant wife,

before, night after night,

17,000 kilometres from home 

you spent the years of what remained 

of your young life in the danger and cold 

of a canvas-covered aircraft,

protecting Allied shipping lanes

and searching for U-boats,

first skimming low over the blue Mediterranean 

and then later the great dark cold North Sea,

unwaveringly following your conscience,

surviving who knows what 

to finally come home

when you were just thirty three.

I wish I could write a happy ending for you,

one like those Westerns you so loved,

have your horse, Polybon, waiting for you,

have you hero-like swing into the saddle,

lift your bride up behind you,

and whilst the credits roll

turn away from the camera and canter 

towards family and contentment

in those distant blue mountains.

But that is not your story. 

After eighteen happy and generous years 

when your family grew and you rebuilt your life,

you became sick, your lungs shrunk,

your evenings were destroyed with coughing

and a desperate struggle for air.

You said it was chronic illness from the War.

You said it was from flying in the freezing night.

Eventually a reluctant government agreed.

You were only fifty one.

And I must write of your last seventeen years

when something dark and terrible 

and utterly beyond your control

emerged to periodically overpower 

who I think you wanted to be.

What caused that unhappiness?

Dormant darkness belatedly emerging from the war?

A side effect from all that medication?

Or something always in you,

a human flaw hidden by youth

and emerging with age and hard experience

to periodically flame and rage?

And when the fire passed,

did you even remember 

who you had momentarily been?

If I could, I would wash away those last years,

fetch from a deep well water of such sweetness

as to soothe and heal all the mind’s wounds.

What is it that you wanted? 

You were too edgy for mere contentment.

I know you desired esteem and recognition

and I have seen in that portrait

both the young man you once were

and the person you wanted to be.

The teenage me, confused and oppressed

by the ferocity of your change,

had to reject the external mania.

Now, if I could, I would tell you 

that these older eyes 

have searched your deep core

to seek what lay hidden behind 

trauma, temper, days and weeks

of interminable conflict and rage,

mere externals the years are washing away

to reveal a complex and good man trapped 

by something vastly beyond his control.

You did not live a long life.

Your heart gave out. 

We gathered around you in the hospital,

your wife and four of your five children.

For more than a week you lingered,

gaining comfort from our presence.

Then you fell into unconsciousness

and the green monitor flat-lined.

He’s gone, I said.

He’s not, she said, in momentary disbelief.

Then briefly and tenderly she touched you,

forehead to forehead, before,

emotionally exhausted, we left together

in strange mixture of grief and relief.

You were not quite sixty eight.