Lemon

when life gives you lemons

   your view is simply golden

   that was unfolding green

 

life when you lemons gives

   sours the fish to perfection

   and tangs the meringue

 

you when lemons life gives

   sing like a gin and tonic

   something super sonic

 

gives life lemons when you

   think about it the pip

   plopped in pots for new surprises

 

lemons you life gives when

   their scent’s a sign god-sent

   tingling like lemonade

Pear

in ‘fruit in a chinese bowl’

   hockney’s pear is flat green

   easily mistaken for an avocado

 

to eat a pear for free

   knowing it tastes three million

   english pounds is our own business

 

banksy has a pair of nostrils

   for detecting things on the nose

   but is not known for painting pears

 

while arcimboldo’s noisy fruttivendolo

   has a pear for a nose

   and a face we could munch for lunch

 

and nothing much touches

   the most famous pears of cézanne

   square there teasing our primal instincts

 

 

i.m. David Hockney 11th of June 2026

 

 

 

 

 

Banana

 

visually why there is a curve a smooth

   bend to the fruit is answerable

   via your average online search but why

 

aurally why the unpeeling

   is almost soundless has very rarely

   been discussed on nature programs

 

tactilely why so has something to do

   with the hard inedible outer

   protecting the soft white edible inner

 

olfactorily why all factors really say

   to the sense safe rather than not in this case

   is a case of habit and mind over matter

 

sensorily why the taste and texture evolved

   into this uniquely sweet meal

   is anyone’s guess now your turn

 

Gaudí

 Reflection at Corpus Christi from Philip Harvey, published in the pew sheet of St Peter’s Eastern Hill, Melbourne, June 2026 

This year the cross was, at last, positioned atop Sagrada Família, one hundred years since the death of the architect. Antoni Gaudí died after being hit by a Barcelona tram in 1926. Some say this year’s construction completes, in true medieval fashion, a building begun 144 years ago; others say there is more work yet on the project. Like everything Gaudí designed, there is nothing usual about his cross. 

The arms of the cross use his famed double twist geometry. They are square-shaped at the outer ends, octagonal at the inner ends. The cross is 17 metres high, about the height of a five-storey building, and this is for a reason. Gaudí wanted the cross to be seen everywhere in the city, to shine by day and illuminate by night. White glazed ceramic and glass is used, radiant materials that can withstand atmospheric exposure. Winching such an object atop the highest pinnacle of the basilica has been a considerable engineering feat. Inside an aperture of the cross a sculpture of the Agnus Dei is placed, in accordance with the original drawings.    

Much of the architect’s planning for the church was all in his head. He left behind models but not lots of blueprints. The generations after Gaudí continue figuring out his design intentions and RMIT specialists in Melbourne have played their own part. Professor Mark Burry and his colleagues took up the challenge of figuring out the enigmatic geometric codes of Gaudí, first through drawing graphic recreations of his plans, then applying aeronautical software to reveal his amazing and unique constructive genius. The Design School was then able to apply these discoveries to address unresolved questions about the church’s many elements in order to complete unfinished parts of the building. 

This month Pope Leo XIV visits Barcelona. There he will dedicate the Tower of Jesus Christ, with its newly positioned cross. While this will be a big moment in the life of the city, public attention is also being paid to the possible beatification of its designer, who was declared Venerable by Leo’s predecessor, Pope Francis, only last year. Be that as it may, these words of the church’s present architect, Jordí Faulí, speak directly of Gaudí’s intentions: “He wanted to move people, to inspire them by seeing the facades, entering the interior, and seeing these treelike structures that rise upward into the space for the Eucharistic celebration, and for all this beauty to reach everyoneʼs heart so they would think about their lives, think about the life of Christ and their own lives, and that this would lead them to feel loved, welcomed, and ready to love others.”

 

 

Kiwifruit

in anzac khaki with telltale stubble

   an egg-sized time-bomb waits its moment

   precious at the pacific rim

 

would a fruit by any other name taste as sweet

   whether chinese or a gooseberry

   cut open green as pounamu

 

roll over pavlova a pas-de-deux

   by their fruits you shall know them

   pavlov gourmands stepping up for more

 

of that smell somewhere between

   arctic and tropic depending oblong

   on the tilt of a green planet

 

of that sound amidst clattery leaves

   birds abuzz depending there so long

   ripening into grateful scoopfuls

 

Orange

 

a range of o so many catch the eye

   secure in socket sizing the day

   their colour a name all pre-arranged

 

orchard breeze of every language lifts

   tang skin dynasties hold compact aroma

   release as real peel deals uncurl

 

under wraps an octagon obtains else

   pithy decahedron boats torn from moorings

   else fingernails dodecahedrons dissect

 

their stark materials sharp curvaceous dulcet

   squelch harmoniously along the nervous system

   like favourite familiar tunes into the dark

 

eating segments opens sounds close in mind

   growing up fast laughing all the way

   picking a flower on this fantastic day

Apple

 

grew to the exact weight and balance to fall

   turned on its axis in the wind sufficient to fall

   here where it rests in a thankyou bowl like a still life

 

cool as to touch and that way for weeks of time

   colours over every curve soft to disappear

   an invitation to bite and bright till they’re gone

 

once bitten twice why not the scent of airy wood

   is it or watery flesh or bitter or sweet it is

   to the last mouthful the scent of our world

 

the crunch the head inside hears the chop chomp

   intimations of mortality inimitable

   serendipitous bitesize gulps  

 

tasting belonging to be and the longing to be

   going on forever a taste of this airy world

   fresh acidic sunny tart champagne

 

 

 

Grapes

called red but regularly polished black or dried blood

   they bubble a languorous still life

   freak storms could have drowned to oblivion last summer

 

yet tousled searching for the best ones they lob and huddle

   bobbled they are plastic fluid to the fingertips

   gripping to stems and tugged loose with a bend

 

dewy mornings suffuse their surfaces

   the faintest hint of young wine comes and goes

   that could have been their surfeit in a vat

 

instead of such fate they burst readily in the mouth

   turning their fair share of moisture to the good

   and sweetness textbook adjectives strive to match

 

their skins mingle in the multitudinous juice

   drawing up sediment oddments and pips lips spit out

    into the fond recycle of air and earth 

 

 

Microcredentials

 April 30 Word of the Day: Microcredentials

 

Remembering to turn the calendar at the end of the month is a subject no one learnt at school. A pinch and a punch for the first of the month was, at some stage, included in the one-hour microcredential course on offer, free of charge, on the domestic front.

 Later in life, that is to say the following month, it was unfortunate if you caught a cold and missed the class on hyphens, those compounding chemists of grammar busy forcing different elements into new formations. Life is dotted, even dashed sometimes, with the perennial challenge of when a word goes from being a micro-credential, finding its feet so to speak in a joint venture, to microcredential, the fully fledged latest addition to the vocabulary, or if you prefer fully-fledged. There is a lifetime of catch-up (see also, catch up) if you missed the class and find no one (see also, no-one) offers diplomas in hyphens nowadays.

 Accelerated learning is a lifelong practice, if you are alert and open to new experiences. In a single day you may earn degrees for such microcredentials as improved access to tinned goods, opening the jar screwed shut by a robot, or prising the thin plastic supermarket bag at the tear for your selection of peaches – all with no tears!

 Module seems to be the larger or governing term for every kind of microcredential, modules coming into vogue around the time of the first moon landing. An astronaut with microcredentials in moonwalking takes a small step in the belief this is an augury for a giant leap. Though his dependence on modules is too obvious to mention, certainly the astronaut can add small steps to his CV. Golfing on the moon is next level, where just teeing off deserves a microcredential of its own, let alone bunkering out of a crater.

 Some people complain that microcredentials has too many syllables, why not just extras, or skills, or add ons, or add-ons? Resistance to the idea of a Diploma in Details or Certificate in Specifics is observable, while others are too busy organising microcredential reading lists and one-hour interfaces to be concerned with semantics, let alone if microcredentials is a product of our time, or in fact something people do every day without any personal recognition whatsoever, and have done since BC.

Walking

 April 29 Word of the Day: Walking

 

Image: Fence graffiti along The Secret Way near Stevenson Street in Kew, Melbourne.

 At dinner we talk amusedly about walking in the early morning towards the station or, as it were, work. Of the different kinds of stranger, several of whom we recognise from years of walking past them early in the morning. As if they are not strangers, in fact, given their familiar face and dress and gait and attention, though we don’t know their names. We speak of them as though we know them relatively well and well maybe we do, vulnerable as they are at that hour of the day, waking up.

 Of those who never make eye contact, walking headlong or headstrong or something all-head as if we were not there passing them early in the morning along the footpath and they have nothing to say or are lost in thoughts (to be charitable) or just don’t say hello as a rule, or on principle whatever that principle may be, gone without a murmur past the shoulder into the past tense. Of those, contrariwise, who do say hello and always will even before daylight has filtered through enough for them to see who they say hello to and always will, just as we say hello briefly by way of reciprocal recognition of their existence and the existence of existence in general, for example birds starting to chirp and a vehicle careering along the street.

 Of those who jog, which is a step up from walking only that could twist an ankle, they are usually appreciative if we step onto the nature strip or gutter or available driveway and say thanks, not hello, as they lunge forward in a desperate bid at improved health when they could still be resting in bed, or just walking like us, rather than engaging in an excuse for running that demands people get out of their way. Of joggers and the like who do not say thanks, we speak over dinner, their fevered brows and wobbly knees, as they wonder if their personal best is worth this wordless, nay breathless almost, exertion, clearly with no time to think or even have a moment to notice us as they fantasize marathons.

 Of dogs, of course, some off course, and their owners dragged along behind, where the method for brief friendly encounter is to smile not at the owner but the dog, thereby eliciting a friendly smile and noise from the owners, in the well-founded belief that anyone who is friendly towards their dog must be friendly, by definition; the dog, or dogs sometimes twisting leads and nosing in the grass, being the connection that brings out the best in walkers, walking both ways down a quiet street early in the morning.         

 

 April 28 Word of the Day: Breathing

 

Breathing

 

            Effusions everywhere

slip from guards,

            light green

            figuring lines

surprised as day,

            dragging colour

out of night

and its grey

            brown presages.

Airy air fillers,

            lovely constraints

featured for water.

            Rain remembrance

from its first sign.

            Cool brain

fanned with green.

            Pure consolation,

            timely relief

attracting an isolated mind.

            Untimed foliations

spiralling around houses,

            edging streets,

hanging about places,

            soft watery,

just like gurgling.

Firm as thought

at the root,

up above high voltage,

            inscribing freeways.

Where are their endings?

            Brushed up

            vacant lots,

halved around wires,

            hilltop generations.

            Endearing survival

spreads into the sky

just like breathing.

What birds this way?

            Fringes sway

            colour pale,

frail as thought

reaching new currents,

its own pattern

            of itself.

 

[From ‘The Times’, a series of poems written in 2007]

           

Spelling

 April 27 Word of the Day: Spelling

 

Teaching again today to young children writing.

How to spell moon.

 

They choose to write about what they’ve decided already.

The poem of getting here from there.

 

One writes the speeds of his scooter in five lines.

Downhill’s best.

 

There’s the girl who has been to Europe and Rome and Bali.

How to spell Europe.

 

Another lists the contents of a magical forest.

The poem of getting there from here.

 

But they need not go with the set theme of travel.

Dogs are the best, and cats, with names.

 

One child describes a bird building a nest.

How do you spell twigs.

 

Another finds dead wood and builds a fire.

Her first bush camp in large lettering.

 

And the world is quiet and the words come forth.

Steadily towards page two.

 

Sometimes a dee for a bee and a backwards kay.

Correctly spelling bee’s a beginning.

 

And who am I to interrupt the HB loops.

The rubbing out and the margin doodles.

 

A concentrating room of poets.

Words that are all theirs precise and best.

 

 

 

 

Blatteration

 April 26 Word of the Day: Blatteration

 

A Glossary of Domestic Sounds

 

whirligig

a toy which children spin round

“the remote jumps streams, a whirligig in their hands”

 

volant

flying; passing through the air

“invisible messages in good faith and bad arrive volant with pings in the phone”

 

tink

to make a sharp shrill noise

“the kettle’s boiling tinked”

 

sternutation

the act of sneezing

“the cat betrayed its whereabouts with a bout of sternutation”

 

rodomontade

to brag thrasonically; to boast like Rodomonte

“all morning talkback radio rodomontaded”

 

larum

1 alarm; noise noting danger 2 an instrument that makes a noise at a certain hour

“wake-up larum a rooster, sleepy-bye larum ambient chimes”  

 

ignivomous

vomiting fire

“the new ignivomous stove lights automatically”

 

gleek

musick; or musician

“the needle drops into the groove unstopping sleek gleek”

 

 fluxion

1 the act of flowing 2 the matter that flows 3 [In mathematicks] The arithmetick or analysis of infinitely small variable quantities; or it is the method of finding an infinite small or infinitely small quantity, which, being taken an infinite number of times, becomes equal to a quantity given. Harris.

“a washing-machine, that by fluvial fluxion flushes out infinite fluxion fragments”

 

eructation

the act of belching

“the station wagon let out a series of eructations”

 

dyspnoea

a difficulty of breathing; straitness of breath

“the dyspnoea of the emptying plughole”

 

blatteration

noise; senseless roar

“the blatteration of lawnmowers every Saturday”

 

[Selections from Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of 1755]

 

Hormuz

 April 25 Word of the Day: Hormuz

 

No one’s going anywhere in the Strait of Hormuz

All attention telescoped on shipping at anchor

Where no means yes and the command is refuse,

Destroyers indistinguishable from tankers.

 

World’s attention telescoped on shipping at anchor

Asks who is the prince and who the buffoon,

Carriers indistinguishable from tankers

When next week or next year both mean soon.

 

Ask who is the prince and who the buffoon -

It’s a narrow call, a tight squeeze, a stalemate

When next week or next year both mean soon

And you are merely the current head of state.

 

It’s a narrow reach, a sight tease, a failed state

The Strait of Hormuz every second in the news

And you are clearly the current headline’s fate

Running out of energy searching for clues.

 

Dire strait of Hormuz every second in the blues

Knows everyone to blame and no one to thank

Running out of energy not wanting to choose

With holidays on hold and no tiger in the tank.

 

Now everyone’s to blame and no one’s to thank

What’s mine’s mine turning overnight oil shocks

With holidays on hold and no extra in the bank

The very latest form of Persian paradox:

.

Mine’s mined, burning midnight oil shocks

No one’s going anywhere in the Strait of Hormuz

The very oldest form of Persian paradox

Where yes means no and the command is accuse.

Tokyo

 April 24 Word of the Day: Tokyo 

 

This time not, will never go

Neon noodles anime shops

Perfect parcels fishbowl lenses

Now overseas is out of reach.

 

Noodle neons anime stops

Behind roller doors’ double locks

Now overseas is out of reach,

The Tokyo I have never seen.

 

Beyond roller doors, double locks

Grow bamboo walls moss-bank gardens

Old Tokyo where I’ve never been,

The place you read about in books

 

Green bamboo walls moss-dank gardens

Cinder layers of firestorms

Places you only see in films,

Nonstop faces’ fluent markets.

 

Cinder layers of firestorms

We can only half imagine,

Nonstop faces, fluid markets

Not now, all grounded.

 

We can only half imagine.

Microcircuits scroll up and down.

Not now, all grounded,

Only us at home like thousands.

 

Microcircuits must do instead

This time, now we’ll never go,

Only online pictures thousands

Perfect parcels fishbowl lenses.

 

[August 2020 & April 2026]

 

Image: Sake tributes in Tokyo, by B. Harvey 2025. In online poetry group during lockdown, as an exercise I invited members to write a poem about a city that they currently could not visit: “The poem can go anywhere. It can be descriptive. Memories may fill the poem. Longing to return is possibly at work. By imagining the city then and now and even in the future, you play with one of poetry’s strongest devices, which is tense. The reader is left with a strong sense of the city.” I chose the pantoum and wrote three poems for the group (Florence, Jerusalem, Tokyo) in August 2020, which are released here, with little alteration, in April 2026.

Bardolatry

 April 23 Word of the Day: Bardolatry

 

[Found Poem]

 

Ranking Shakespeare's plays is so subjective.

Is it the intricate plot?

So much of Shakespeare is about the contradictions

between the private and the public self,

and how we adopt a part to perform the latter.

But of course, your personal favourite may be influenced

by the actual production and the cast. While there are

some obvious strong and weak plays,

different plays speak to different situations. 

Even the (reputedly) bad plays often have sheer brilliance

within them. Because most Shakespeare plays

have some very meaty roles, a great performance

can really boost the enjoyment of the play,

in my opinion, transcending

some of the weaker plot elements.

 

Ranking Shakespeare's plays is so subjective.

Is it the evocative and sometimes impenetrable dialogue?

It's a concentrated assault on the language processing centres

of the brain, for sure,

but it leaves me giddy with emotion.

Love the language in all the plays.

Yet atomising the plays here

apart from the nominal multi-parters

ignores the reality that no play stands alone,

the sum is greater than the parts,

and there are clearly much larger-scale projects afoot.

The camera angles are typical of its director.

 

Ranking Shakespeare's plays is so subjective.

Such ranking is necessarily an exercise in both futility

and eccentric preference. Shakespeare should not be read

as history, despite the desperate attempts of some

to insist they are true biography. Of course,

all the politically incorrect plays are lower down the list:

every age creates the Shakespeare

that reflects its self-image best. Shakespeare wrote

for the theatre at the time,

not for PhD theses centuries later.

The outdoor ambience is amazing,

with songbirds around the park

adding ad-libs from nearby.

Just magic.

 

[Found Poem: Fragments from the Comments column to ‘To see or not to see : every single Shakespeare play – ranked!’, by Michael Billington. The Guardian, 22 April 2026: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/ng-interactive/2026/apr/22/every-shakespeare-play-ranked-lear-antony-cleopatra-hamlet ]

 

 

Jerusalem

 April 22 Word of the Day: Jerusalem

 

City of my childhood prayerbook

Acres retold, promise unseen

Temples pool sides stone golden gates

I have not a rhyme for those

 

Promises retold, aches unseen

Ancient columns of politics.

I have not a rhyme for those

Saints who deal with all the damage

 

Modern columns of politics,

There aren’t the words to express that.

Saints have acts for all the damage

Morning after to start again,

 

There aren’t the words to express this.

Here are some: light, home, food, warmth, rest

Mornings after. To start again

Is enough to hope for in this world.

 

Here are some lights, homes, food, warmth, rest

Ample on hill lovely afar

Quite enough to lose in this world.

Enough to sing when they’re quite gone.

 

Ample on hill lovely afar

All languages reiterate

Enough to sing when almost gone,

Adults understood at best in part.

 

Languages reiterate

The city of my childhood prayerbook,

Adults understand at best in part

Temples pool sides stone golden gates.

 

[August 2020 & April 2026]

 

Images: Iso-mandala No. 85 – Jerusalem (September 2020). In online poetry group during lockdown, as an exercise I invited members to write a poem about a city that they currently could not visit: “The poem can go anywhere. It can be descriptive. Memories may fill the poem. Longing to return is possibly at work. By imagining the city then and now and even in the future, you play with one of poetry’s strongest devices, which is tense. The reader is left with a strong sense of the city.” I chose the pantoum and wrote three poems for the group (Florence, Jerusalem, Tokyo) in August 2020, which are released here, with little alteration, in April 2026.