Florence

 April 17 Word of the Day: Florence

 

Where does the day go, and the night

David’s already said goodbye

No flights out and, in fact, no flights

Churches declare the reason why.

 

David already waved goodbye

Gaze on his marble flesh no more.

Churches declare the reasons why

Santa Croce forlorn at morn.

 

No gazing on those supple forms

Again, and ingrained imagine

Santa Croce at dawn forlorn.

We’ll not behold their likeness again.

 

Again and again he imagined

Dante, he knew, never went back.

We will not see his like again

His great plans all done and dusted.

 

Dante, you know, never went back,

Self-isolated in his cell.

All the planes are done and dusted

Only shells of their former selves.

 

Self-isolated in our cells

We have the words, we have the snaps

Only shells of their former selves

Those schemes, vacations, dreams and dares.

 

We have the words, we have the naps.

Where does the day go, and the night

In dreams of vacant doors and squares.

No flights out and in. Fact: No flights.

 

[August 2020 & April 2026]

 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.

Coal

 April 16 Word of the Day: Coal

 

1966 is famous for ‘Norwegian Wood’ and our school excursion to the Morwell opencut mine. Changing trains at the splendiferous Caulfield Station, we stepped into a Gippsland red rattler, pulled down the windows, and stared with open eyes towards our rapidly approaching destination: the yawning abyss of Yallourn. Colossal powerhouses streaming with steam overwhelmed our childish expectations. Mountainsides of prehistoric coal met our collective consciousness, the magical fossil that brings new, if transient, life. After the first half hour of this industrial-sized vision we were wondering why we hadn’t been taken instead to the circus, or a movie at the crystalline Capitol Theatre, or several hours of the zoo staring back at us. Interface with coal has always been a one-way exchange, as is the nature of fossil fuels: they are all give and we are all take. This was part of the educational purpose, perhaps, of our excursion and if it was then it was a quick lesson. Artistic value was in short supply. Truckloads of briquettes rattled past towards the depots of Melbourne, jostling about like darkness visible. Their heavy sooty smell hung in the evening side streets of childhood as neighbours stoked their heaters to a perfect orange-red glow. The idea that coal needed to be phased out, in fact should fade out as soon as possible, had never entered their minds, or been entertained by public decisionmakers. We knew it was unlikely that if we waited long enough on our excursion the compound pressure on the coal would turn it into diamonds, just more coal, of which we had seen enough already. Childhood was a time of boundless energy and infinite possibilities.

Gash

 April 15 Word of the Day: Gash

 

White cells rush in to stop the flow though it’s

only the vegetable knife, only onion, the red blood

shines and sticks to things. Skin. The course of events

has something to do with it: having to wait

‘interminably’ for whatever: just those two

quarrelling on the escalator got you. Down. Why

can’t they find somewhere else? Versus, that is

how quarrels actually look! Then the heat,

in the workroom and ‘someone’ was not being upfront.

When they act like a prat you wonder what’s your

part: do I overreact, sound usual, absorb it all

in practised silence, say something to clear the atmosphere,

what? We know what happens through mini-disasters,

we keep on going. But damage control is only

half the battle. The red swells up in its svelte way.

Never afraid of it, but you know it means

something else, alack: the day has been loose, hectic,

unsatisfactory. Apply elastoplast on the washed area. 

 

Loose? Hectic? Unsatisfactory? Did you say that

on the spur of the moment cutting your thumb?

Actually so even-handed, and you have to be easy

to finish cooking anyway: exact litres, tablespoons

and minutes, serendipity of an extra flavour,

the art of the spicy aroma or lifting boiling

water off the heat. The outside goes quiet.

The gush heals of its own accord. The night cools,

No doubt an essential purpose of cool nights.

In its place, the sign of a ‘hot’ day: a red

stripe. In its place, steady breathing, ask me

to accept the forces not so aching blind.

The gauze bandage an alternate flesh colour for those

who eat too many oranges. A soft distraction

from a page of night-reading. Drifting mind

could escape all those bad moves, mistaken

accusations. Retract them, even.

You could be walking away like

a perfect hermit who has found sophia.

 

[September 2020, retrieved and reworked April 2026]

Erudite

 April 14 Word of the Day: Erudite

 

Erudite is the invisible mender

 Erudite bonds given hard facts to certain other unexpected and unlikely thoughts to produce original outcomes

 Erudite proves rapid-set in the receptive mind, keeping its stylish effects long after even though no one is quite sure how

 Erudite works long hours for detailed outcomes

 Erudite can be of the highly specialist application right through to domestic science, personal improvement and do-it-yourself

 Erudite appears to hang in the air, even look invisible, yet it is high load-bearing, if needs be going everywhere at once and impressively

 Erudite might look like it requires a lot of learning but without really trying it holds the whole construction together with a minimum of fuss

 Erudite is good around the house fixing ignorance and nonsense

 Erudite sometimes looks like it’s all surface, before noticing its hidden depths that spread into the past in vast inventions and intentions

 Erudite may be in error and rude, then dead right and civil

 Erudite is not the answer to everyone’s prayers, but then most prayers do not require erudite

 Erudite is resinous, resonant resounding, available to everyone but not everyone responds

 Erudite sticks to the point at every point, no matter the matter

 Erudite indites midnight flights 

 

 

 

Teddy

 April 13 Word of the Day: Teddy

 

The teddy bear was first produced in 1903, but the New Yorker who made the toys only started the Ideal Toy Co. in 1907, while Steiff of Germany had reportedly already been manufacturing them. This is all happening around 1906, the year of John Betjeman’s birth. Indeed, the teddy bear and Betjeman grow up together. They are peers. When, late in the poet laureate’s life, he was called ‘teddy bear to the nation’ the phrase had more Freudian meaning than the speaker could have been aware of.

 Is it an insult or term of praise? What is it? The English liked to believe the teddy bear was named after the King, though Americans are in no doubt it was named after the President. Evelyn Waugh gives Sebastian a teddy bear in ‘Brideshead Revisited’ to indicate that his character clings to childhood and doesn’t want to know about the adult world; Sebastian becomes an alcoholic and disappears half way through the novel. This was a clever ploy by Waugh, who had led his readers to think the book was all about Sebastian, when it was about Charles Ryder’s relations with the whole family and the attendant Roman Catholicism of its heritage. We are in no doubt too that Waugh got the teddy bear idea from observing the behaviour of Betjeman at Oxford in the 1920s, though Betjeman of course is not Sebastian in any way, shape or form. Aloysius is one of the few comforts and securities in a confusing world

 The teddy bear itself is a 20th century cultural artefact that was given supreme value by the great admirer of English cultural artefacts. Betjeman also wrote a story, one where the teddy bear is the main character. In contrast to the very Catholic Aloysius, Waugh’s name for Sebastian’s teddy, Betjeman’s teddy is called Archibald Ormsby-Gore. Archie, for short. (pictured) He had a lifelong friend, an elephant called Jumbo, who appears also in ‘Archie and the Strict Baptists’. Archie would go to chapel and listen to sermons that went for hours. Betjeman shared with Waugh a fascination with the peculiarities of English religion, though Betjeman would be called thoroughly Anglican, though not of the severe Calvinist kind, and certainly not a Strict Baptist. He has a memorial in Westminster Abbey. Noticeably, Archie in the story is someone whose differences the author both celebrates and tolerates. Through all the vicissitudes of life, Archie the actual teddy was there (and Jumbo) to the end, being in the poet’s arms when he died in 1984.     

Metacognition

 April 12 Word of the Day: Metacognition

 

At lunch today it was reported, via the most reliable sources, that our universe has as many as two trillion galaxies. It’s ours, but in what sense do we own it? Another word that floated into view over mushroom quiche was metacognition, which is to say thinking about thinking. Teachers need to be in possession of such things, the current shape of our universe and thinking about how we are thinking, in advance. As surely as day follows night, the classroom is ready to manage. There are pupils of all ages who, even today, are happy to believe there is at most, one galaxy and maybe a few others. They could care less about pushing the boundaries of the Milky Way. They are tacit learners. If a stargazer told them there are maybe two trillion and that’s just in this universe, tacits would take on this knowledge with equanimity and possibly never think about it again. After all, one galaxy or two trillion, there’s nothing we can do about it. Then there are aware learners, aware that is they are standing on our unique planet gazing out at immense star patterns, many of them so far away they are invisible. Awares might put down their knife and fork for a moment to ponder how that is possible, especially as the universe moves at sensational speeds even as it looks perfectly still in the night sky. Awares think about this in the way we wonder randomly how the ancients joined the dots ‘up there’ to make a scorpion or a lion. Pupils each must have their own drawing board. Then there are strategic learners, good whether at testing a hypothesis or setting the table and cleaning up afterwards. Their metacognitive skills wish to devise ways of finding answers to questions such as why stop at two trillion, if there are more universes then where do we stand in relation to them, or sit down to lunch even, and why weren’t we told this earlier? Together strategics figure out these and other conundrums, soft and hard, with the same doggedness and verve. Fourth, though presumably there are fifth, sixth, and seventh levels of metacognition given there are two trillion galaxies just for starters, is the reflective learner. As the word says, they are not only strategic but reflect on their thinking, monitor their strategies and change them accordingly. They may observe the correspondence between the only life we know on Earth, numbered in the trillions but all different in mode and appearance, and the burgeoning of galaxies up to and including the trillions likewise ‘out there’, many of those galaxies invisible even to the eye of the reflective. They will write a corresponding poem by way of illustration, or a record-breaking symphony eventually, or a group sculpture by the seashore.       

 

 

Wazz

 April 11 Word of the Day: Wazz

 

Listening to an acceptance speech by my brother Mick to a mixed audience in a St Kilda venue, an unknown word (unknown to me) emerged from the high talk. Concerned (if that’s the word) that some attendees may not be interested in everything he had to say, Mick seemed not to care if the disinterested chose at some stage to go have a wazz. Being myself an Australian of a certain age and travel experience, this wazz word was way out of orbit. Furthermore, my Californian spellchecker underlines wazz with a red squiggle.

 But it’s not an error, not West Coast, and is related to the gravitational orbit of the Earth, being British slang (apparently) for urinate. The venue, as is law, had some excellent facilities available for this natural function. Online generally keeps the definition to the straight and narrow, though wazz hazz been known to refer to other bodily functions from time to time. The OED claims that its first recorded use is in 1984. It claims, in its celebrated formal manner, that there are fewer than 0.01 occurrences of wazz per million words in modern written English. Though presumably that figure is higher in spoken English, even if a novelty to a resident Australian. Popular awareness was raised by its occasional use in Absolutely Fabulous.  

 As inferred earlier, wazz rhymes with jazz. This puts us in mind of the world of music, which is why we were all there in St Kilda on a drizzly March evening in the first place. The line caused me to wonder if it was part of Mick’s armoury, or perhaps that’s battery, of rebukes for hecklers at British concerts who want more of the fast songs and less of the slow, lilting ballads. Wazz started life as a verb, morphing into a noun some ten years later (1994), the form of speech used during the speech. Although much of the literature claims that the word is vulgar, it is a mild and even slightly comic nonsense word compared with other synonyms for piss.

 In the context it all made sense. Spritzes fizzed, whiskies hit and ales palely flowed as the audience leaned into the speeches ahead of a promised bracket of chansons. Only the rare punter made a beeline for the conveniences, or wazeria, as those assembled hung on every word. Indeed, for a while there about the only person not intoxicated was the one giving the acceptance speech.  

 

Maxxing

 April 10 Word of the Day: Maxxing

 

eyewearmaxxing to position glasses in each room of the house, memorably, thus obviating the need to search the house top to bottom each time a pair of your glasses is misplaced or ‘goes missing’, thus also inspiring a growing appreciation of the art and science of glasses-making, optometry as it were, frames, tints, dependability

 hairmaxxing to comb the remaining white locks into waves providing room for air to flounce and sun to dry them into a respectable and resilient shape, without counting each hair knowing there are less than this time last year and who is counting, streaming from under a tweed cap

 monographmaxxing to surround the reader with eight, nine, ten books of current interest their contents leading at the very least to interest if not next level contentment, available for attention over the short term such as a suspended haiku, medium term the essay as it should be, awe long term the Russian or similar who just talks like that, truly, leading even to satisfaction, thrills, revelation, awe again

 napmaxxing to rest shuteye as advised ideally twenty minutes before rems rev-up, thus restoring the zizzy or dizzy or tired mind with a while, else a longer siesta fifty minutes say after hard work in the hot sun and beating rain, then to jettison that tiresome dream for a new touch of reality

 silentmaxxing to maximise the times of available quiet away from the noise of the world demanding our hearing with its mindless intrusions of leaf blower hours and supermarket thrash and hormuz buzz and endless ads and helicopters overhead

 slowmaxxing to reduce the speed with which anything is done, not running to catch a train but slowing down to catch the next one, moving from one task to the next with an eye to every detail of the task and an enjoyment of these small details known from a lifetime’s experience

 vinylmaxxing to pack the stack of tracks wax appeal for hours, recordings both new, platters of fluoro wizardry, and old, a scratch on track three and undulations still keeping intact the thirties première, until day turns the turntable into even and the needle drops one more time to a moving voice from another age     

Civilization

 April 9 Word of the Day: Civilization 

“CIVIL. CIVILITY. The tendency which there is in the meaning of words to run to the surface, till they lose and leave behind all their deeper significance, is well exemplified in the words ‘civil’ and ‘civility’ – words of how deep an import once, how slight and shallow now,” writes Richard Chenevix Trench in ‘A select glossary of English words used formerly in senses different from their present’, Second edition, revised and improved, London, John W. Parker and Son, 1859. Appropriate on a day when an uncivil megalomaniac may catch the world’s attention merely by blurting online that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” on his social media platform, the civilization in question being the Iranian, often thought of as the Persian civilization; or does he mean the American civilization? He doesn’t say. Trench says, “A civil man now is one observant of slight external courtesies in the mutual intercourse between man and man; a civil man once was one who fulfilled all the duties and obligations flowing from his position as a ‘civis,’ and his relations to the other members of that ‘civitas’ to which he belonged, and ‘civility’ the condition in which those were recognized and observed.” Somewhere between these two meanings of civil falls the shadow of the megalomaniac, one who reportedly switches from a pretence of civility to a menacing uncivility in a moment, for whom civilization is a word of most slight and shallow meaning. Trench has words for this word too: “The gradual departure of all deeper significance from the word ‘civility’ has obliged the creation of another word, ‘civilization’, which only came up toward the conclusion of the last century. Johnson does not know it in his Dictionary, except as a technical legal term to express the turning of a criminal process into a civil one; and, according to Boswell, altogether disallowed it in the sense which it has now acquired.” Used in its modern sense, threats of erasure of a civilization from a megalomaniac prompt every effort of civil individuals, in both senses defined by Trench, to reject and denounce this threat, and to call out the dangerous nature of the social media star, failing as he does to fulfil duties and obligations. As this cruel political game goes, the threat and its deeper import is soon superseded by other events that relegate the original blurt to a wound on the collective mind, like all the other scars left on civil societies everywhere as they absorb the true meaning of his lonely platform fantasies.

 

Asti

 April 8 Word of the Day: Asti 

The Barbera d’Asti flows uncorked on Easter Day into Waterford crystal and Bohemian glass, speaking the language of Piedmont grapes more fluent with each salutary sip as plates of roast lamb and bowls of best brussels sprouts and hot roast potatoes, parsnips and glowing Yorkshires do the serving rounds and the sound of voices quickens appreciably appreciatively appropriately, the Barbera calming us, stimulating the reward pathways, dampening threat signals, ramping up treat signals, intensifying the chinking of cutlery and volume of vocals, so the shape of the cat Saoirse is more lithe and the timbre and gusto of Claudio Monteverdi becomes more elevated, the soggy ferment of the purple mountain fruits making us think clearer or making us think we think clearer, transparency on the increase, picking aside the sprig of rosemary and maximising optimally the contents of the gravy-boat, and yet fairly, prompting memories of Turin from another decade and an Easter Spring spent lolling in Italy. And a dreamy orangey rosé from an obscure Grampians vineyard, cheers, and only one vineyard, The House of Muck, is that from Isle of Muck in the Inner Hebrides, or after Lord and Lady Muck lately of the region hereabouts with wallabies, best to ask the Laird of the Label who owns a modest collection of  ridiculous automobiles, wears a cravat, smoking jacket, monocle, and according to the wine’s website a Panama hat, since extracted from a cellar of like obscure nature managed by a friend of Bridie’s, sluiced into handmade flutes and rinsed Waterford  singing in the light like several madrigalists at once, as our collective gut-brain axis sways slightly as a pole glided by a gondolier of yore, remembering details of the Saturday vigil heretofore last even, the deep voiced alleluias and clashing bells of the thunderous glorias, as it were. And a Brown Brothers also, cheerful and unassuming, deeper cabernet sauvignon, you can’t go wrong with a Brown Brothers of Milawa as my Irish mother-in-law would say and not without reason our old joke and we toast her as we should, sparking up glutamates that fire brain cells to fast-track information with hilarious exhilaration and scrumptious exhalation, the air cheery with candlewax scent and autumnal flower cuttings including surprise tiny roses from climbers outside the French door, as we celebrate our gardening plans both front and back garden, the cerebellum not noticing particularly, celebrate the quiet and chattery afternoon at home with stories and our own opinions about everything under the sun, and everyone. Then a few chocolates, tea or coffee.

Sullen

 April 7 Word of the Day: Sullen

 

Re-reading In my craft or sullen art the personal declaration doesn’t sound like a revolution, or even just a reason for writing words, perhaps because of sullen, a word meaning resentment, moody, bad-tempered, morose, uncommunicative, a word that sets the tone. And though uncommunicative, the art or craft is not still or too moody but Exercised in the still night, a time When only the moon rages, giving credence to the claim that he is exercised though everything else, bar the moon, is still. Except, either in his mind or to acknowledge their certain presence And the lovers lie abed, as night will have it, though unexpectedly not with ardour or passion or mutuality but With all their griefs in their arms. The words, having set out their condition, then turn to a series of opposing purposes for writing words: I labour by singing light. Does he even sing for his supper? Apparently Not for ambition or bread, even if he’s doing a good job of keeping our attention while staying alive; Or the strut and trade of charms, which discounts the theatre in one go; On the ivory stages, and likewise universities and award ceremonies. How sullen can one be forgoing all of those avenues, and prosceniums? Instead, he turns and admits working in his own craft or art But for the common wages Of their most secret heart, thereby raising the drama of who are these lovers and who is he to them; and what is most secret? But for them and their love only the words are made, Not for the proud man apart From the raging moon, giving the sense that he himself cannot live separate from this turmoil, this exercise and grief, unnamed though it be. He writes: I write On these spindrift pages, spindrift a word meaning the spray that blows off waves, and therefore fleeting, transient, the slightest momentary crest of something far deeper. Nor for the towering dead does he write, never mind how aware he is himself of their towering beingness, nor how sullen they leave him, With their nightingales and psalms and all of that great readerly backstory. No, by his own admission he writes But for the lovers, their arms Round the griefs of the ages, though one hopes there is more to love than grief. Even the grief that is most secret cause of so much sullenness, cause of the words. These loves Who pay no praise or wages, any more than anyone else, it seems, Nor heed my craft or art. Thus leaving the maker of words alone in his sullen state, wrestling with pride and fame and loss, which he cares to share with us, not the lovers, the patrimony of twenty lines signed by a Welshman famous for writing the same twenty lines. 

Northland

 April 6 Word of the Day: Northland

 

Exiting cinema into daylight

Thick thud of Action in our heads

One question looms and envelopes:

Is Northland Smaug’s Lair

Or Smaug’s Lair Northland?

 

Jewellery strewn about, gems in profusion,

In corridor after corridor,

Coins in thousands shine,

Close to touch, impossible to take:

Mountains of slippery valuables.

 

And a dragon’s eyes follow us,

Closed circuit cameras

Ready should we think of lifting

The Arkenstone from its $2 Shop,

Prompting fiery wrath on us all.

 

Bell Street should be easier

But for these newfangled Euro cars

Death in their headlights

Orcs, Shelobs and the like

Charging across bedraggled vision

.

True, wizard carers are out there

And I am not telling you

The secret I carry on my person,

But is home home

Or another Lake-town of Unpredictables?

 

[February 2014, retrieved and reworked April 2026]

 

Fifteener

 April 5 Word of the Day: Fifteener

 

In hospital in May 2022, I received a book gift from Lenore Stephens, the last poetry of her schoolfriend Jordie Albiston entitled ‘Fifteeners’. Today I retrieved two pages of Notes written into my phone at the time while resting in bed, and never returned to.   

 Fifteeners 1, written in the Austin Hospital: “First, these poems are not sonnets, not just because they are not 14 lines but because JA is not using the 8-6 argument and counter-argument of a sonnet. She has in most of them gone consciously tripartite 5-5-5, itself a useful thing to be aware of when reading the poems as that’s the turn JA is playing with, three main connected thoughts or feelings in careful sequence. Like a sonneteer she reels them off. They are not a sonnet + 1 line, rather the sonnet looms in the background of her practice as model of a short turning poem. I think JA has a tragic view of existence. Even her humour and comedy is frequently coming from that vision of things. I remember reading her say somewhere that life is full of sadness, fragile and in a state of loss. Her Red Dirt Hymn ‘Gone’, for example. Her alphabetic series ‘Omegabet’ rides on just this transience, cannot be understood without this edge of near permanent despair. Sometimes she writes lines that do pushback from the prevailing mood, bringing with them beauty and respite and consolation even. I pay close attention to these small advances. She seems haunted in a present tense where memory is telling her it’s all over. More anon.”

Fifteeners 2, written in Donvale Rehabilitation Hospital after the operation: “Her use of the Cloud of Unknowing as a model, I suppose you’d say, for the Poem (i.e. that explains everything), is she simply forwarding an elegy for language, or promoting the Poem as a means to speaking of God? Maybe JA holds a Romantic view of the Poem, which she presents here in a mock medieval style, one that is rigorous and humorous at the same time. I am left pondering the game she has played with the ancient text. Her game playing with old works goes up a notch in The Five Wits, as she turns them into little Shakespeare acts of querulous tragi-comedy. Dickinson’s mode and internal argument is on fervent show in this set of marvels, as she turns mere philosophical terms into the combustible realities they would so calmly define.”

 

Deadly

 April 4 Word of the Day: Deadly

 

“DEADLY. This and ‘mortal’ are often synonymes now; thus, ‘a deadly wound’ or ‘a mortal wound’: but they are not invariably so; ‘deadly’ being always active, while ‘mortal’ is often passive, and signifying not that which inflicts death, but that which suffers death; thus, ‘a mortal body’, or body subject to death, but not now ‘a deadly body.’” Thus, Richard Chenevix Trench in his ‘A select glossary of English words used formerly in senses different from their present’ Second edition, revised and improved (London, Parker, 1859). To what extent Trench’s Victorian senses of the word have any relationship to the contemporary Australian Indigenous use of ‘deadly’ is wide open to discussion. ‘Deadly’ here is a term of highest praise: excellent, great, fantastic, cool, awesome. Emerging in the seventies, such is its widespread use that by the nineties national awards were initiated for excellence in music, sport, entertainment, and community achievement among Indigenous Australians called, very straightforwardly, the Deadly Awards. Theories for the emergence of this present sense of ‘deadly’ are based as much on guesswork and circumstance as empirical evidence. That the adjective is used in Ireland in similar positive ways is one thing, while the OED tells us that ‘deadly’ used in the English colloquial sense of extremely or excessively dates from at least the 16^th century. It’s worth keeping in mind the sense, too, of anything about which there can be no argument at all, like death itself: to stamp anything as ‘deadly’ is to say that that’s the final word. At which stage a word turns from slang into common speech is a perennial question of vocabulary. Its use in this awesome sense may and in fact does differ in meaning and cultural value in the Irish, English, and Australian contexts. The word ‘deadly’ for First Nations Australians will have significances all their own, and within the reality of the fatal impact. Trench continues: “It was otherwise once. ‘Deadly’ is the constant word in Wiclif’s Bible, wherever in the later versions ‘mortal’ occurs,” then he quotes, “Elye was a deedli man lyk us, and in preier he preiede that it schulde not reyne on the erthe, and it reynede not three yeeris and sixe monethis. Jam. V. 17. Wiclif.” In the Letter of James, Elijah is presented as a ‘deadly man’, which is to say mortal just like us, but that through prayer we like him can do things that are not only good, excellent, cool, but even awesome. Any body at all.  

 

 

Fuel

 April 3 Word of the Day: Fuel

 

April fuel jokes abound, come thick and fast in recent days, gush in fact, keeping gush in the vocabulary. Gush is at risk of vanishing from use. Gush is at a standstill. Plans to purchase a horse or two, now that the car will soon be off the road for months, preoccupy our minds temporarily as we sit in peak hour traffic, wondering unconsciously if peak hour traffic itself will become a thing of the past. These conjectures never get as far as thinking about the amount of fuel required of a horse. It would return us to a time on the Heidelberg Road before motor vehicles, where we chat now idly amidst plenteous other and ravenous idling cars, checking stations for the rising cost of a litre of standard. Artificially collaged images circulate online. A bus with a tea clipper fastened to its roof, sporting over thirty sails, provides the best in wind power. Convertibles converted into coaches, BMWs into buggies, Toyotas into troikas – graphics whizz past on a production line, good for a laugh. Dependence on crushed fossils meets dependence on why-oh-why wi-fi. The days when fuel was simply the wood collected for the hearth fire are found in books. We have arrived at a pretty strait. Still, as we know, April fuel jokes have a short lifespan. Strike a match, the potassium and sulphur quickly flares then burns out. The import of the joke is understood and quickly forgotten, given its shared universal meaning: fuelishness is a joke on us all. Fuelishness is a tank of petrol, here today and gone tomorrow. What’s fuel for the goose is fuel for the gander. There is no fuel like an old fuel. A fuel and their money are soon parted. It is said that a practical joke is the lowest form of wit, and if it wasn’t before it is now. Only who is the joke on, the object of the joke or the teller? Newsfeeds deliver them and commentary explains them, until this form of humour needs be put to rest. The bigliest April fuel joke though is the one about the man who started a war without telling anyone and then expected them to join in and finish it.

Rivaroxaban

 

April 2 Word of the Day: Rivaroxaban

 this is the delicate balancing act the go-slow streaming service my body ingests after breakfast the tiny orange dot in the base of a japanese teacup a dot called rivaroxaban

 riveting riviera realistically rivaroxaban

 my haematologist I have one of those too held significantly airily eccentrically the forms where I ticked all the boxes my body that is ticked and yes I pass with colours, presumably the flush in my cheek, and he will see me again at ninety he said if I need to go off at that stage rivaroxaban

 the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog in command of all the letters for quite a time yet rivaroxaban

 appointments flowed easily major concerns were lowkey and operable I circulated without fuss from pillar to post popped the letter in the letterbox friends never asked anxiously and days passed without event in the days before rivaroxaban

 revealing revelling rivulets oh thankyou rivaroxaban

 let me repeat let me repeat my repute is a request to repeat and repeat what the doctor ordered for my own good and my pharmacist repeats matter-of-factly her eye keeping to the script rivaroxaban

 aches and pains lead to tests and diagnoses like everyone else our mortal flesh leads us to specialist referreds and dead certs pills and potions with top of the list once a day with food a sip of water rivaroxaban

 crossing the rubicon righto rivaroxaban

 imagine there’s no heaven it’s not easy if you try it’s a waste of time like thinking above us is only sky imagine a world without rivaroxaban

 thank god for small mercies cereal friendship without terms conversation in the kitchen lively and light a glass of fresh water breakfast and habit becoming habitual quick rivaroxaban

Cosy

 

April 1 Word of the Day: Cosy

 Reading the letters of Oliver Sacks, recently published in paperback. His friendship with Wystan Auden tracked via the index. Arriving at this signoff to a two-page letter dated New York, 31 March 1973, the year of Auden’s death. Sacks recalls Auden’s ultimate departure from America the year before: “I remember at the airport, on that painful Saturday, when a stranger came up and greeted you, I asked you whether you thought of the world as being a large or a small place; and you replied, “Neither. A cosy place.” So – the world being a cosy place – I am sure I will see you in England, Austria or New York within the next few months.”

 Knowing full well the abstract meanings behind a large place (immense, unmanageable, impossibly complex) and a small place (inhibited, claustrophobic, a dot in the universe), Auden instead personalises the world, affirms our experience of our world, accepts already that it is larger and smaller than anything in our experience, but that it is at the least and importantly, cosy.

 Sacks has memorised the word. It deserves our attention too, as used in their exchange, for surely Auden means cosy in all of its meanings. The world is comfortable. The world is pleasant. The world is snug. The world is a homely home. The world is sheltered. He also knows the opposites of all these adjectives.

 Readers of Auden’s biographies are familiar with his messy, even chaotic living arrangements – whether on socially sunny Ischia, regulation rundown New York, or ungarbling gemütlich Kirchstetten. This was always Auden at home and cosy. Humanity moved through the rooms and humanity’s need for belonging kept being copied by hand onto paper. It’s what we have, so make the most of it.

 His writing too, constantly sharing itself with a not always understanding world, moved towards someone who connects and somewhere that is cosy. Which is to say, where readers are at home, can recognise the place as their own, despite everything. This is done in full awareness of places that are not cosy. Sacks believes, in this worldview, that he and Auden will meet again in this world, soon. Instead, he is left with Auden’s message of faith, hope, and love.     

 

Seawall

 Seawall

Not of sufficient significance to have a name 

I am a seawall. The only way to see me is by looking up. My age is young but I am made of ancient stones that surrounded me. Their tawny or dark-grey colours have rested here for eons. Many are riddled with honeycomb bowls or slope smooth and black, even darker when saltwater washes over their surfaces daily. Returned diggers and laconic stoneworkers chipped the thin rectangles for placement. Their balancing act keeps the earth in place. The men had only bush, sea, and sky, while today I have softened into the landscape, their work done. Because I hold aloft the Great Ocean Road. Traffic is invisible from the rockpools. Surge rushes into the troughs with abrupt thunder, withdrawing only slowly as water particles dry on skin. And the nearby relay of closing waves on beach and reef is a gentle rhythm to the ear. Louder than the unseen traffic above, the random exhaust or macho shift of motorbike gears, occasional note of something else going on. Fine grains of mortar may be washed by the night tide or daytime’s finger grip of rockhoppers traversing to and from Separation Creek. New filler has been slapped into crevices here and there where crumble turned to gap. I am solid and resolute. Without me the Road would not exist. Erosion and hardest bracken would make the coast impassable. Forests of eucalypt would fall into the sea. I am the quietest outcome of engineering, no two blocks the same, with a steady blank look. I am warmest in the mornings when sun rises across the strait. Cockatoos make themselves known. A container on the horizon is an object lesson. White blond driftwood tangles with kelp bubbles and tree fern corpses submitted lately by the sea for someone’s consideration. Come midday my purpose stands in high relief. Chatting adults and fossicking kids step from boulder to boulder away from the spray. Their careful stepping in contrast to the rushing surge of water through the corridors of stone, each safe footing an assurance of confidence. Once every so often lately teenagers spraypaint the base with their cool logos. Their artwork sings of happy stealth, but does not outlast the roadsigns high above us, out of sight, on edge. Artwork that will fade to a fad. I am smooth, relatively speaking. I will outlast the afternoon. After the rockhoppers are home again, with their seashell and knotty stick. I shall stare into night as I have all my life, before the Southern Cross rising lopsided from the depths. The cold sets in and a whale passes by. Very rarely a seal still lumbers alive up the stones, for safety or bearings. Wallows in a pool spilling down to another pool, and so on, unfailing into the swirl and surge again. I keep separate the earth from the sea. My back holds the ground and my face is the closest reach of water’s tempestuous edge. Echidnas have nestled against my insider protection, burrowed at a moment’s notice. I imitate the cliffs that shadow the Road and determine its snaking. Through winter I am a forgotten fortress, when in spring storms cannot dislodge a single rectangle. Lately the Road services net the falling heights nearby, plunging silver bolts to hold geography in place. Bushfire wipes out grip, root systems have tentative starts. But I have a firm stand. Grass cannot find a niche nor acacia seed a gap to crack open. March is an interesting time. I rest from the long heat. Gannets pass by unexpectedly. And a few humans each day, to remind the world in particular of humanity. Waves against the reef reach stupendous heights and rain arrives in impressive black clouds.

 

Temptation

 

Iso-mandala No. 101 (September 2020)

Reflections for the First Sunday in Lent, the 22^nd of February 2026, in the pew notes at St Peter’s Church, Eastern Hill, Melbourne.  Written by Philip Harvey.

 How to talk about temptation? How to deal with it. Who to talk to, when in Scripture, from the start, temptation as a fact is assumed.

 A lifetime of encountering the decalogue teaches that the commandments are not simply warnings and directions. They describe society and its temptations, picture a human world that is not only peculiar to some ancient time and place, but is ours also. Forbidding in appearance as well as in their messages, they challenge our human desires and motives, causing us to think, reflect, and act. The commandments are talking points for the subject of temptation; they also inform the law.

 They are delivered in the wilderness. Wilderness is a place of desolation and need. There, things will be clarified over time, down to the basics. Wilderness is dangerous, but also purifying. This is where we might have a showdown with our demons. We might find it a challenge, but resolutions are reached free of distraction.

 The story of Jesus in the wilderness (Matthew 4: 1-11), familiar over a lifetime, delivers another way of talking about temptation. We are presented directly with the challenge of saying yes or no. Temptation, what to do? Either way, something will happen. Christ’s example is to summon reasons that counter temporary powers and illusory promises, even down to the whole world and everything in it.

 In terms of the story, here is a person who will not be tempted; Jesus is preparing to go into his ministry as one who speaks forthrightly, forgivingly and with godly authority. While for us, here is a model of possibility. We attend to his many consequent words and actions as lessons in how to live and understand God’s law. We are shown how our mistakes are made and how restoration is achievable. We learn to develop good habits, preferably to bad habits minor and even major. We choose ways that give life, whatever our circumstances. 

 Even the conclusion, where Jesus is ministered to by angels, indicates that challenges and setbacks are real, but that we will not be left lonely. After deserved rest, we can enter a new day.

Recipe

A Recipe Book of Perverbs

 

Too many cooks make light work, recipes

of a thousand miles start with one step.

 

In for a penny in for a pint

is a bread-and-butter issue.

 

To bring home the bacon eat the frog

chew the cud, and stay cool as a cucumber.

 

Know your onions, spill the beans,

eat your greens and say cheese.

 

If you eat like a horse

your supper will be humble pie.

 

Rhubarb rhubarb is food for thought

take with a pinch of salt.

 

The proof of the pudding

is selling like hot cakes.

 

Found a plum job, pulled out a plum

plum crazy, until plum tuckered out.

 

Everything stops for tea

while the watched kettle never boils.

 

A spoonful of sugar helps the caffeine go down

better latte than never.

 

Life is a bowl of cherries

in a nutshell, a cup of kindness yet.

Senses

 

The Perverbial Five Senses

 

The eyes have a thousand nights

and each day is a sight to see.

 

Eat, drink, and – it’s on the tip of your tongue -

put your merry where your mouth is.

 

A nose by any other name

sniffs out trouble and smells the roses.

 

Ears lend me your friends:

cheers of words and the spheres of music.

 

Skin deep is the beauty

of nerves headstrong hanging by a thread.

Wardrobe

 

A Wardrobe of Perverbs

 

To have your hat and eat it too

time to put on your thinking cap.

 

A rose by any other name’s the same

through rose-coloured glasses.

 

Off the cuff, bright as a button,

someone gives you the shirt off their back.

 

While another, pocketing red-handed

would take the shirt off your back.

 

An old school tie fashion statement

fit like a glove, goes: keep your shirt on.

 

Every dog coat has its day but

when I am old I shall wear the cat’s pyjamas.

 

To catch someone with their pants down

is a bit below the belt.

 

While the emperor’s new clothes show to effect

the ornaments of his birthday suit.

 

Shrouded - a dress dressed to kill

is a dress to die for - in mystery.

 

When the shoe is on the other foot

who knows if you’re coming or going.

 

To walk in someone else’s shoes

means putting a sock in it.