It's Not Our Fault.

It’s Not Our Fault.

​
A million fish lie white-belly up and rotting
in shallow water of the Darling River.
The mighty river with its 40,000 year old fish traps
is drying into a dying trickle,
its tributaries into muddy ponds.
Upstream, corporate cotton growers 
squint and stare over vast irrigation reserves.
“It’s not our fault,” they say.
“We only take our entitlement. 
It’s the drought. Blame nature.”
Downstream, the pumps with their 
too often deregulated water metres
steal the precious scarce water 
into networks of open channels.
It’s not our fault,” they say.
“Everybody’s doing it. 
It’s the drought. Blame nature.”
Across the entire basin and beyond,
nearly half the Australian continent,
a record heatwave looms.
Summer temperatures soar to 47C.
Plants droop. Water holes are mud.
Panting roos seek relief but find none.
Birds sit noiseless and still, wings and beaks open.
“It’s a tragedy,” says the politician, 
“But it’s not our fault.
There’s not much we can do.
It’s the drought. Blame nature.”
But a million fish lie white-belly up and stinking
in the algae bloom oxygen-deprived water
and each day come warnings 
of more disaster to come.

 First published in Verse-Virtual, June 19

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