A busy week

Every day has been packed to the brim so that I get up before 6.00am, keep moving and get home late. Some is work, some is family – like the citizenship ceremony last night that saw us sitting through a small-town affirmation of a large life decision.

The Ancient Mariner verses I have learnt today are –

The cold sweat melted from their limbs,
Nor rot nor reek did they:
The look with which they looked on me
Had never passed away.

An orphan's curse would drag to hell
A spirit from on high;
But oh! more horrible than that
Is the curse in a dead man's eye!
Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse,
And yet I could not die.

I love the unadulterated melodrama in this poem. It seems to fit the 'life or death' magnitude of the subject.

In these last days I have felt a resonance between this poem and the novel The Life of Pi that made a big impression on me when I read it a few years ago. In both works, the main story is a about survival at sea. And both seem to touch on eternal elements of human and animal nature.

Here is one of the pictures I took on a walk in the Flinders Ranges, South Australia. On this short walk at dusk, we found ourselves in the midst of grazing kangaroos. We were so at ease with each other. This seemed elemental – like the Ancient Mariner, or Pi on his lifeboat.

Flying to Melbourne

Flying to Melbourne today for a business meeting with State Library of Victoria, I learnt several verses.

The many men, so beautiful!
And they all dead did lie:
And a thousand thousand slimy things
Lived on; and so did I.

And more....

Being a survivor is not unalloyed joy.

These ochre pits have been used by Indigenous Australians in South Australia for tens of thousands of years. Standing there, looking at them, I couldn't help but think of the generations of people who used this ochre. It is good to know that Aboriginal art is flourishing right now and that this tradition continues. So much else is lost.

Ancient Mariner

I am memorising the Rime of the Ancient Mariner. I'm about half way through and today I will learn...


The souls did from their bodies fly, –
They fled to bliss or woe!
And every soul, it passed me by,
Like the whizz of my cross-bow!


The cross-bow that he used to kill the albatross that now hangs from his neck. When we do wrong, it drags us down. We are burdened by it until we have paid the price. What price redemption?

Station ruin in Flinders Ranges (July 2009)

Constancy

You knew me
fragrant with bee-buzzing blossom
plump with rising juice;
and then, when summer
crowded my rustling dress
to dance me gaily with
the scudding clouds.
You knew me
when autumn's decline
stripped each leaf
and shrivelled sap.
And now, in winter's
frozen waste, holding
brittle endurance,
you know me still.

Should spring come late,
or not at all,
enduring all this
long bitterness,
you will not falter.

Summer heatwave

We're in for a heatwave – days of 40+ degrees with strong winds. The evening news reported that Melbourne morgues are full from seasonal deaths, and they are expecting 44 degrees and gale force winds with humidity less than 10%. A recipe for firestorms.

I wait with bated breath.

This doesn't diminish this love for my country.


This Land

This land longs for my weight,
wishes for my breath,
yearns for my voice.
The wind is singing me to it,
the grasses waving me welcome.

This land gave me life
and abides in me.
Here, I am needed
and must stay.

My feet will walk this earth
where I am known.
I will rest in the shade
by the creek;
breathing damp air
on soft skin.

Here, I will crumble into dust
and become, once more,
this land that knows me.

Olive ezine

Plump green olive
soaked in brine,
glistening sleekly,
a clue sublime
of tangy mouth
pizzazz divine.
Abundant fruit
of ancient time,
meet your fate
and be mine!

Darker cousin
of the brine,
black and wrinkled
in bed with lime,
an aquired taste
I opine.
Puckered cheeks
will bring to rhyme
salty pickles
preserved in ezine.

The Panther

A panther came into my dreams last night,
Prancing its fineness before me.
It padded slowly around the coffee table,
Turned its cold eyes on me, and posed like pharaoh’s cat.
Soft and still, it sat staring at me -
I stared back.

A panther came into my dreams last night,
Touching my world with its strangeness.
Gracefully glossy, it paraded its difference before me,
Sniffed at my leg and the chair with equal interest.
Quietly indifferent, it sat and groomed itself -
And ignored me.

A panther came into my dreams last night,
Bringing the green jungle with it.
The damp air of deepest shadow chilled the room
Suspending me in frozen animation.
The panther stretched and yawned a wide, pink yawn -
And warmed me.