Searching for Poems

Even when I am not writing
I am.

Seeing things like statues
in the park
makes me wonder
why they were put there.

A statue of  perhaps local Indigenous people
a family
at the water
is a tribute to first peoples
making them ever present.

Does it mourn the massacres
or celebrate their survival?

I need to find out more.

I like to stop
to photograph tiny details
like grasses of different
textures and maybe later
I will ask my friends who
know plants well – ‘What’s this one called?

I love the wildlife so close
everywhere in Brisbane city.
Someone was thoughtful at town planning
and valued keeping small pockets
of land for lakes
and ponds especially for the birds.

The swamp hens and the ibis are so close.

Sometimes one could
almost forget the traffic surrounds
and mini sky scrapers
going up and up.

Brisbane what is your hidden history
what are your hidden stories?

As as writer I search for your poems
try to make sense of you
as a place.

 

(c) June Perkins 26/04/2015

Rain

I love following Suzanne’s journeys to find Haibun. Here is one about finding a haibun about rain.
Visit her blog to read the resulting Haibun.

EARTH SLUMBER

I don’t often visit cold places so it is interesting to read of winter at Melissa’s incredible blog.

Melissa Shaw-Smith

I climbed the steep gully,
A cathedral of blue
Winter sky above me,
The sound of the hidden
Stream rilling and gurgling in my ears.

My footsteps criss-crossed
The busy pathways
Of mink and weasel—
Soft divets scooped
Where they belly slid
Down the banks,
Tracks suddenly disappearing
Into a perfect O of snow.

I paused to catch my breath
And listen to the sparse oak leaves,
Rattling ineffectually
At the wonderful clear silence.
How gratifying to be
In such a pure and simple landscape.

I could feel the earth slumbering
Under her coverlet of snow,
And see her graceful, full curved hip
Thrown carelessly across the valley.
Her languid, dimpled arm
Draped over the ridge,
Head resting, forehead kissing
The bank of the stream
As though peering through
Marbled ice at the
Rivulet of bubbles
Slipping along below.
And there before me
Her wide smooth rump
Thrust skyward
For…

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Black Rock Swamp

Some more poetry from Mel Irvine.

What Makes Me Read a Poem?

Art in nature – June Perkins

The first lines and opening must avoid cliché
and even better still intrigue and invite me
into the poem’s world.
It really mustn’t tell me how much love is like a rose.
 
If there is metaphor it needs to flow and extend naturally
and there are so many metaphors that have been overused
it might take some experiments to find something original
but too original than perhaps I won’t relate.
 
The poem could profound
I don’t mind having to do some work to understand
but if it totally confuses, leaves me lost,
then I am unlikely to read until the end.
Please don’t let it have an artifice of depth
but actually be a shallow pool.
 
It might leave me with a question, an impression, a mood, a challenge,
a pertinent observation and
a constant musing on its end.
I might want to read it again and again.
It might be the poem I’ll forever carry in my head.
 
It might enchant and seduce with its
delicate impressions that capture
the natural world I love.
 
It might introduce me to words
I have never heard before but instead of shutting me
out make me curious and willing to go and look them up.
 
It might touch a nerve
crawl into my poetry sense
with its metre and cadence
burrow into my head
to create comfort or discomfort
to unnerve me
with its truth.
 
Perhaps it is clever beyond belief
an artful crafting of sonnet, haiku, prose poem
or villanelle
but if it’s clever just for clever’s sake
I might not give it a second reading
even though I admire the technical skill.
 
Or maybe it’s just what I needed to read that very minute and
it just came into my life
in the feed, in the poetry book someone gifted to me
in a random search online.
 
Maybe it says what I am feeling
trying to do
trying to understand
trying to remember
trying to encourage in the world
trying to forget.
 
Now I’ve told you my reasons
I wonder dear reader
Why do you read a poem ?

(c) June Perkins