Sharing this piece from my dear friend Mel Irvine.
my mother’s garden is older than me in places (it has places) i have never stood or seen until now, remembering cedar trees (dad planted them when we were little) and weekends spent collecting bush seeds, saplings and native vines, repotted in the school holidays when the other kids in the street visited the city […]
Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts. I write songs as well and posts like this make me think I need to share them more as well as the poetry.
Just love this Melissa.
My favourite line: “air too dry for ghosts
signs scoured bare of their messages”
The cottage pulls itself apart at the joints in the heat of the day
settles back into itself at night
high desert wind clatters in the fan palms
fine dust coats the mirrors
In the yard husks of coyote melons
blow into the roots of the brittlebush
small things scurry across the wash
leaving shallow indentations in the sand
lizard, ground squirrel, jack rabbit
burrow under the creosote
beyond, a crust of manzogranite
oceans of baking salt flats
garrulous hunkered down shrubs
with the resilience of rock
a feral landscape of burnt out, boarded up cinder block
half-savage dogs behind chainlink fence
transient human purchase
slippery as sand
the highway lined by salvation—
liquor stores, animal shelters, churches
sun bleached cars drift
from one side of the yellow line to the other
air too dry for ghosts
signs scoured bare of their messages
crouch, bristle, burn
hold tight, bend with…
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Love this one Robert!
Trains
1
In the marrowbone of night,
your song parts the fog.
I never knew the secrets entrusted there.
I never knew that cinders and steel
could lie so passionately
and still believe that the watchman’s hours
would evaporate and leave us scratching for more.
I have stolen time.
The windows remain closed and shuttered.
Even the wind turns away.
The track narrows.
You call.
Again.
2
Sometimes song seems the only respite,
the rhythm of clashing cars
and moments stretched beyond the next bend
to that point where light winks out.
We both know this lonely tunnel.
Payment is due.
I have always exited alone.
3
Another evening, and red smoke completes the horizon.
Your ribs stretch for distance,
and while I cannot see their end,
I know by sound
their lot.
Sing for me.
It is not
too close.
“Trains” was originally published inLightning’d Press(Issue 8)…
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I lost your Licuala fan palm once seen everywhere
unless I found it in a special garden collecting
palms from every land and then
I lost your rhythm of heavy rain falling
again and again until the garden was
a lake and the day off work –
that might bring to family rained in
some respite from the demands of everyday life
to just sit and be family in song.
I lost that feeling of catching your
sun rise above the ocean if I felt so inclined or
sunrises above the cane
-across the road
I saw an ibis on a rooftop,
wondered if she dreamed herself with you.
A baby butcher bird adopted my family by the clothesline
sang to them life’s mysteries of
the lost and found.
(c) June Perkins
Prompt 3- Using Line Breaks from Tweetspeak
One must have a mind of forests
branches creaking with the wind
a song of long forgotten ones
that fell
to be covered by shades of green, rich and velvet
tasted by the eyes
cupped in bowl like hands then
eaten for future dreams.
Light sneaks in from the sky
to streak across the
pathway below
through the gaps of green
lines of warmth
awakening.
I look to the leaves
dancing velvet
praise to the sky.
(c) June Perkins
Working with some prompts from Tweetspeak Poetry
Prompt one ‘One must have a mind of’ and sensory language.
So, so exciting! Super, super busy! I think I need a pair of butterfly wings! Flap, flap.
Above is our second last sneak peak of the enchanting illustrations by Helene before the launch. Just one more reveal! No poem to reveal, as you’ll see that in the book. Wow, our caterpillar book is about to fly! No more cocoon. . . so very soon our book will fly into your hands.
It’s final editing of the manuscript time – the point where the poet is not aloud to tinker or fine tune the metre of any more lines, but has to finally be satisfied for the line edits by Matilda.
We have some magical people in children’s writing and poetry writing something about the book as we speak. Can’t wait for their feedback ! They are the first other than the team to see butterfly emerge from its cocoon.
Our…
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“O God, my God! Praise be unto Thee for kindling the fire of divine love in the Holy Tree on the summit of the loftiest mount: that Tree which is ‘neither of the east nor of the west,’ that fire which blazed out till the flame of it soared upward to the Concourse on high, and from it those realities caught the light of guidance…”
-‘Abdu’l-Baha, Selections From the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Baha
This months Nineteen Months Contribution
Ripple Poetry 