January

 

“january haiku garden”

 

yesterday spent beheading

lavender

shrivel bent from last week’s heatwave

 

and starting trimming swaying

nectarine

branch-threads now firm fruit had dropped

 

watering-can watering

watering

best early in the morning

 

sunlight wakes epiphanies

correa

pink where yesterday was green

 

urine-rich wasp-free spreading

lemon tree

glows overnight sensations

 

dangling laughably by strings

tomatoes

lusciously by stalks hanging

 

eddies of airiness wave

banksia

to-and-fro ancient whiteness

 

rivers of timber rainbow

eucalypt

send endings into flowers

 

eye perceives green pagodas

sweet basil

nose detects fragrant odours

 

buried inside numerous heads

climbing rose

holds off the moment again

 

buried in clump of compost

pumpkinseed

returns curved in great green clouds

 

knowing not the hour wait

hakea

breaking open in the heat

 

secure another year

satsuma

sweetened air softening death

 

ramifications of the

secateurs

collect in a wheelbarrow

 

and native pea climbers spray

green shade-cloth

and burst through paling fence slats

 

rising infestations curbed

bamboo shoots

thinned bundled tied for high stakes

 

next day unseasonal floods

gutters full

seem now seasonal enough

 

 

Gulf

 

[Gulf]

 

orders are orders

south of the border

down sudetenland way

 

the gulf of america, to explain

lies midway between

the left and right hemispheres

 

of the president’s brain

between wanting everything

and his fear, to have nothing

 

with the great wall of texas

the gulf is the only manmade folly

visible from the moon

 

the gulf of america widens each day

in every way bigger and better

no money will close the gap

 

the missile or bullet fired

crosses the empty gulf of america

entering the victim’s space X

 

the president, remember him?

cheats at gulf his scorecard

an abysmal abyss, alas

 

yet gulf stream humidity

cataclysmic stupidity

the first policy cupidity

 

means an executive order rudely

signed by the gulf of america

drowns the land overnight

 

lies get around this untidy sight

but for most the blackout fade

out is simply called the gulf

Image: ‘New Holland and the adjacent Islands, agreeable to the latest discoveries.” Alexander Kinkaid, 1790.

Reading

 Reflections for the Third Sunday of Epiphany, the 26^th of January 2025, in the pew notes at St Peter’s Church, Eastern Hill, Melbourne.  Written by Philip Harvey.

 

Being read to is one of life’s minor pleasures. While one of the few places nowadays where it is required, and generally the norm, is church. The other public place where we regularly read aloud and are to read to is school. The synagogue was both these things, a place of sabbath worship and teaching, which is where we logically and audibly find Jesus. 

Today we hear him taking his turn reading to the local Nazarenes (Luke 4: 14-21). This event itself is an example to us of why we read Scripture aloud to one another in church, to hear, ponder, and interpret. He is the one giving permission, indeed requiring this be done, which is why in any church we expect the Gospel (at the very least) to be read, or even sung, at worship. The precedent is written into the story, an encouraging model. 

The verses from Isaiah are an epiphany. They enact one expectation of poetry, that it state sufficiently in a brief space the best words to declare a revelation. No syllable is wasted. Listeners may have different reactions, but they understand what’s being said. 

Like all witnesses to this moment, through time, we are told the Holy Spirit is upon him, that he is anointed and brings good news to the poor. God has sent him to proclaim release of those captive, recovery of sight to the blind, freeing of the oppressed, and proclamation of the year of the Lord’s favour. It is a jubilee moment with a difference. They are words we hear in church. 

This text within a text, this poem within the narrative, is read to us as if for the first time. The poem is an icon, an icon of the one who is reading the words to us. Having scrolled down, he rolls it up, then sits down again, rather as we might turn off our screen when we’ve had enough, job done. What next then?      

As we know from hearing the Gospel each week, the showing forth of Jesus is not simply beautiful words but the true living out of the actual prophetic words we have just heard in the icon. Very soon he will say and do other things in the synagogue that will cause the temporary wonder of his hearers to turn to anger, such that they will be ready to throw him over a cliff. It gets nasty, as the living truth of his words take hold in their minds. Just as, today, we are confronted with the actual expectations that Jesus’ presence places on us, in our own particular and peculiar places and ways. 

Again

 

[Again]

 

make america gormless

again graceless greedy grunge

garrulous grotesque

 

make amerrygoround gonzo

again greasy gross gawp as when

make it gaga goo-goo again

 

make amergency ghastly

again aghast agog agoing

to a go-go again

 

male ameretricious gobsmacked

again mask amentalcase

garrulous again

 

me aimless great anal?

mug america grog a lot

make adeal grift again

 

mark amemorial grot again

make amenities globule

global geeky greeting card again

 

make amphetamines grope again

make america graves again

gullible gratuitous agrin

Footpath

 

[Footpath]

 

footpaths are close to home

rumpled by eucalypt roots

and lined with lockdown memories

 

while footpaths in old Ivanhoe

neaten my walking thinking

with their hilly regulations

 

Smith Street Fitzroy is a mash

its drug-induced slogans

a sidestep mosaic of bitumen updates

 

slowly is preferred nowadays

with footpaths, age wearying me

more detail to stop and inspect

 

mazes of schoolboy Caulfield

bluestone wishful thinking lanes

recalled like they were yesterday

 

heartbreak somewhere Cardigan Street

revelations in the High Street

tripping along the Parade

 

the personal commute in my head

is that daily backwards and forwards

years off my life, of my life

 

then again, as if it were so different

the cobblestones and flagstones

where planes take us

 

beautiful one day Paris

just another day London

Rome - eternal footpaths!

 

the world itself walks between

the houses of every outlook

and the road as chance has it

 

a little lifetime learning waking

along these fragments of walk

the global labyrinth

 

jogging the memory bodily

taking me through the motions

of personal discovery

 

why thoughts on footpaths

take their own direction

from the straight and narrow

 

why some are lined and sanded

others inched into place

others full of unfilled holes

 

footpaths where eyes are averted

or depending on the mood

wish to catch a passing glance

 

why when walking and thinking

a minute has new thoughts every

five seconds if I think about it

 

why slow or fast either

is eternity when trying to

get somewhere in too too a hurry

 

why thoughts meander

on point with intense edge

or can pour straight into the sea

 

why nowadays footpaths

stop to smell the roses

or to watch an accident

 

a bicyclist will almost

ruin the renaissance inside

with their illegal rampage

 

not often but often enough

like the blast of spruikers

or cluster-cities of waiting bins

 

why plentiful hatful thinking leads

footpaths into unknown places

while seeming to go straight

 

like whys that persist

why ask what’s over the hilltop

why directions are upsidedown

 

remember how the world

is great trees above heads, houses

with their own special attitudes

 

why the address might have changed

without proper warning

why corners are secret rendezvous

 

share existential dread

meet window reflections

or absently amble from A to B

 

footpaths that seemed helpful

incidentals in childhood, stages

in youth, now are gradual gifts, whys

 

why this could continue continually

rather than stop for a rest

as here closing my eyes, they appear

 

sensationally steep Dunedin

jacaranda daydream Brisbane

stone foot-smoothed Dublin footpaths

 

with their differing associations

mournful Old Warrandyte Road

wistful el dorado of childhood Queenscliff

 

tipsy half-forgotten middle-aged footpaths  

flowering gums of View Street Bendigo

the Bon Accord Track in Spring

Dactyl

 

Dinosaur created by Elizabeth Wade

[Dactyl]

 

“Composed in terra dactyls and set in stone”

 

round clumping found humping

thou thumping once whumping

the sound earth

 

breath finding death keeping

feet muscles fleet ankles

hold great girth

 

walk tender slow benders

leave imprints fresh minted

in soft mud

 

clodhoppers gobstoppers

jaw-droppers claws whoppers

in cold blood

 

the -saurus thesaurus

names sources pre-horses

cadavers

 

toes fretted none bettered

soles refilled heels unchilled

with lava

 

charged fractals large dactyls

thy curving keeps serving

museums

 

feet clip-clop neat non-stop

speak thy tines beat off time’s

tediums

 

X thy marks stark pawmarks

extinction distinction

signed hair’s breadth

 

ode on cue owed to you

fast shuttling past scuttling

 writ herewith

Writing

 

[Writing]

 

stand behind this line

that goes to the end of the current day

even as you fall asleep

 

this line of early enquiry

buoyed by pure wakefulness

exercising excitement unstopped

 

this line sent to earlier selves

whatever it is friends say when friends

getting it right or wrong

 

this is the line you’ve got

whether you keep it or not

highlight, alter, or blot

 

this be the line you sign

never knowing where it’ll end, the need

the silence of the reader

 

stand behind this line

where top speed pulls in to a stop

and a door opens

 

this is that certain line?

wanting to say everything heeded

saying this thing and that

 

the line of reflection

timed to perfection

stuttering with inflections

 

stand behind this line

a place impossible to define

either the mess or the design

 

the line where the story begins

the one you thought you forgot

give it your best shot

 

line that could be a want

line of high velocity wind and sun

line that is a wound

 

stand behind this line until

you come to a complete standstill

please wait for further announcements

 

this line on this very platform

you arrived at just on time

or so it appears, in the din

 

stand to attention, at ease

rest behind this line, contemplate

sometime where the line came from

Ant

 

[Ant]

 

wobbling ant afoot in sunlight

is our perception, toppling over pebbles

carting home lunch on its back

 

while closeup itsy’s procession

shows a nobly forward figure

of elegant ant manoeuvres

 

all day might be spent watching

the focussed, industrious ant

but attention must go on to other things

 

the Italian poet says his ant

nudges the dried leaf across pathways

hospitable to wayfarers

 

gauging, after consideration,

that solipsism is not ant’s forte

and never will be

 

while here at home the ant

makes circular micro-heaps

between the brickwork to the compost

 

scurrying the hard yards

between heatwave objectives

and the underground cool of ant

 

which it will do alone, or in queues,

forming opinions in our minds

ant does not wait to hear

 

out of sight out of mind

with an ant it seems, at first glance,

one day much like another

 

though another and then another

ant is ant’s day through summer

or so it seems in this heat

 

the Italian perceives ants

as an army at drills

but then he lived through two world wars

 

negotiating looks like squabbling

from this height:

ants like order, but this looks like chaos

 

the atlas in their heads

thousands of words never said

instead, the abstract dance of ants

 

scores circle a billabong of droplets

lying on a concrete pathway

the permanent thirst of ants

 

yet at the first scent of death

ants change their travel plans

shouldering the remains for burial

 

bitsy ants busy their trails

out and into their megacity

pretty labyrinths below nondescript earth

 

that will do them well for the winter

free of the birds

ants alive with memories of sunlight

 

scent is their language

touch that turns command to alert

in the seconds it takes ants to act

 

we might consider ants for hours

as we would a book of Times New Roman

black figures that up and scurry   

 

pages and pages of ant-size words

living concrete poetry

their objective water, not metaphor

 

Notes: the collage grid of ants was drawn with a black sharpie. “The Italian poet” is Eugenio Montale (1896-1981), whose work I am re-reading over the summer, in this respect especially the poem ‘Thrust and Parry II’, in ‘Satura: 1962-1970’, translated by William Arrowsmith (W. W. Norton, 1998).

 

 

 

Daisy

 

[Daisy]

 

summer day in the garden

little flowers

nothing more complicated than little

 

one coral grevillea

pushing up under like curving leaves

indicates it’s taken root

 

repotting dazed cacti

finding insect-small petals

atop surviving antennae

 

too hot by afternoon

reading inside is small prelude

to dozing on the words

 

a handful of daisies thank you

brought home bright

find a quiet place in a vase

 

water reaches its level

keeping them bright

their exuberant explode

 

tangle reminder at nightfall

of all the suns in existence

tiny in the night sky