Thursday 27 December 2012

Blue


Blue

The eye of the female bowerbird noticing a dark grape on the verandah.
The agapanthus in the ditch and up the slopes and over the road faraway.
The worn watertanks, their tin turned grey-blue after so many summers.
The fairy wrens.
The wide blue yonder when the car rounds the bend.
The extensive sky above horizon, one little container vessel.
The Kennett River roadsign, two T’s or one T make up your mind
The overhanging roundleafed almost turquoisey bluegum at the rockpile road turn.
The aqua shirt upsidedown caravan park clothesline.
The rippling ocean meeting the inlet rockshelves, seen through treeline gaps.
The navyblue surfboard on the packrack.
The sky in the rockpool.
The darkblue of the cloud shadow on ocean, always changing, always the same.
The sticker on our front window registration rectangle.
The gravel between road and guard rails cliff.
The entirety of blue to the left of the driver.
The tee-shirts of two cyclists yawing up the incline.
The jeans of the camera-clicking koala tourists too near the road.
The silverblue netting holding the cliff back from collapsing onto the scenic lookout.
The scribbled badge on the back of an arrow yellow sign diamond.
The powder-blue marijuana-green campervan.
The protest sticker on a roadsign: Ruin Another Coastal View.
The snapshots of ocean as we round a landfall bend.
The micro cerulean beach tributaries of Carisbrook Creek.
The bluish white mirage lines above the hot road.
The cobalt van.
The black-blue solar panels on the pale blue Sugarloaf holiday house.
The royal blue verandah railings.
The sky above farm.
The azure Honda.
The Whitecrest entry sign across from the whitecap ocean.
The B&B signs at Kookaburra Cottages, Petticoat  Creek.
The blue-striped bus.
The blue graffiti bridge.
The iron inside the cracked boulder at cliff base.
The blue knitting over the Petticoat Creek fir trees.
The greenstone water over the lapis lazuli rockpool waters, recedes again.
The blue hat of the lawn cutter.
The blue glossy bubble car inside the speed limit.
The grey shale slope.
The blue under the curve of the wave when the foam builds.
The Australian flag on a garden flagpole in a picking-up breeze.
The bushfire reflector for water availability nailed to a fence.
The blue grassblades at Browns Creek.
The blue book of Bridget.
The blue Stage 2 Water Restrictions sign.
The wedgewood blue curtains.
The Skenes Creek Lodge 300 m. sign.
The denim shorts.
The sign High Risk Area Police Enforcing Speed.
The washed-out hydrangeas.
The pearl blue bathers drying on the verandah wires.
The peacock blue beach tent.
The sapphire sea wherever the eye gazes.
The roundy blue skies over the roundy green hills of Wild Dog Creek.
Carol’s stylish blue and brown and black scarf.
The ultramarine roof of the fleeting restaurant.
The worn indigo jacket of the forlorn hitchhiker.
The blue Octopus Apollo Bay Music Festival sign.
The lavender.
The blue ground cover.
The blue bags.
The Prussian blue Pisces.
The slate-blue Mitsubishi.
The blue-grey tint windows.
The blue skeleton hanging from a rearvision mirror.
The blue Café 153.
The six blue bins.
The discarded blue icecream wrappers near the bins.
The Blue Heaven milkshake.
The blue fish in the old fish shop trays.


Wye River to Apollo Bay
on the Great Ocean Road, 
early summer 2012-2013

Friday 14 December 2012

Tàpies



Homage to Tàpies includes some collages and drawings by Bridie Harvey

Saturday 8 December 2012

Epiphany


“It is no more than the moment
       when the meaning strikes one:
Which is not the same as
“It is the moment of truth
       in its extraordinariness”:
Both of which stress the effect that
“It is the showing-forth of that
       previously in obscurity”:
Rather than the present sensation of
“It is the perfect moment crystallized;
       it is the moment whole”:
None of which shall equal
“It is the appearance
       of that which was sought in hope”:
Nor the simplicity and force of
“It is
       the manifestation of a god.”

Definitions, redefinitions
       get the sense and lose the feel,
Are soon consigned by hand
And moment after moment
       to their own ordinariness.
Then there is the effort that,
In word and act, would hold these moments
       to save them from obscurity
Rather than let event and need fly,
And consciousness gather the meaning
       for personal use.
Comes from this sequel
A private sequence
       of which the end is us,
Forcing our none-too-secret hopes
That we are
       and were as others in time.

For it is we who are more,
       more than moments of meaning,
Our own closing, openness
That is the truth
       in remarkableness;
It is our election rushing
From a coming-out to that
       future which is obscurity.
Much more than the present sensation
Is our keeping the present
       from slipping out of reach.
None of which can negate
How we test appearances
       for their signs of hope,
And in simplicity and force
Put before the god
       our single gift.

Friday 7 December 2012

Implicit


Cannot do the art without isolation
From interference, ambition, criticism's blow.
Cannot reach the other without interaction

At several levels of common inspiration.
Cannot be inside the language flow
Listening to outside, without isolation.

Cannot be part of the vast machination
Of the outside flow only listening though
To your own language, without interaction.

Cannot escape behaviour, consternation,
The desolation of the simple grave, so
Language continues without isolation.

Cannot escape sunlight or its oblivion,
But language continues spreading its glow
Oblivious to a time without interaction.

Cannot do the art without consideration,
Without language, nor science in its tow –
Talking of living with or without isolation,
Concerned by existence without interaction.