The Forests Speak

For the Tasmanian Forests

In my slow growing long lasting huon
There are the stories of your grandfather’s hands
And gaze taking me all in

I carry you in my arms to the safety of Earth mother to
Shield you from storms and yet you would
Forget
I belong to your children and grandchildren

Would you unfriend my many shades of green
Lime and moss on rolling hills
See them parched yellow crying
Stripped pine

Would you delist me from your protection
Hold me at a distance
Forget that I am your breath
Forget my distinct scent
In timber in new life as your love seat

Would you let me be overharvested
So people of today are the last ones
To say they saw the Ancients
Who had to make way for too many tree farms

Together we braved the tempest
Of droughts and fires
And as we survive should not our
Bond be stronger?

Would you lie down in
My green tears
To cleanse your heart?

Could you learn to bless me
Let me be the forest at your back
The open arms that
Lovers long for?

(c) June Perkins

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Renewal on the track – She’s a Dreamer to Me

Tribute to Cathy Freeman

She can blossom the desert
race myths in her dreams

She can discover the goddess in
Anyone’s theme

She can win with a blaze or go down in a haze
She’s eternity racing the morning times’ flight

She’s always a dreamer to me

Oh she’s the flame in a town
A Southern cross star
A flag on your corner
An ad on your screen

Oh she’s a barefoot Nova
a Cathy in gold
a Christine in fashion
not a Perec in a maze

And she never gives up
On who she once was
No matter how mad all around her of gone

She’s a goddess of wheels
with a bridge in her steels
But she won’t let mum hug her
That’s just too much

But she’ll pose with your daughter
Shake hands with your nan
Show warmth to a million
She’s got no disguise

She can blossom a town
Take a hand at a dance
Take a chance on a track
Race a myth in a dream

She’s a dreamer who frees
Others from the mundane
Just lifts them up

To where dreaming begins
Makes a podium hers

Oh she paints cities gold
Races myths of her life

she’s a goddess in flight
And the most you will do is wander harbours
Where she has been….

(c) June Perkins

Poetry Perculation

Do you make use of your notebooks? Do you keep one digitally or on paper or both?

Gumboootspearlz

Finding Buds – June Perkins

A perfect poem can arrive from the muse in one heart beat sitting, or it can take years.  It can come from an inspirational or challenging event from that day (like the recent passing of Maya Angelou) or it can be hidden in a notebook and just need us to rediscover and rework it.  Hooray to the writer’s notebook and the buds of creativity within!

I wrote the idea for This Wheel Doesn’t Turn almost a decade ago.  I threw it into a digital notebook and didn’t feel the least inclination to share it but I couldn’t throw the idea away;  one day I went  looking back through my notebooks and decided it had clear potential, however, it had too many ideas competing for attention.  Just one line  was worth retrieving and working with.’ This wheel doesn’t turn. ‘  The setting was clear, and I…

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Climate Refugee

Her island home is sinking fast
so she dances

The ocean mocks in false entrances
she takes no chances

She will not be last left in this place
going, going,
to an underworld space

She sheds no tears

For in shells she hears
her island’s farewell song

In dance she heals
her island’s loss

(c) June Perkins

Search for the Stillness

The silent space
beyond the threads

beyond tweeted tiny details
of everyone’s planet

the tendency of people
to overshare and demand
seeking their tiny minutes
of fame and infamy

those who peek out only
when they have something deep to say

those who hang out for intellectual
sustenance within the threads
of everyday

unravel in waves of concern
in a world like chorus
cheering and jeering at the sidelines of everyday

Connecting us to Maya
and Stephen Fry

silence calls
stillness waits

memes remind of the spiritual
the social obligation
friendship that is more
than threads

tendrils of humanity
respond

silence calls
stillness waits

this is the space
where story beckons

(to be continued – a first draft of the poem, it may change, a chorus to the poem is developing, and this one might be one to perform!)
(c) June Perkins