No stranger now
Selected poems
On First Viewing 2001: A Space Odyssey
Unlike my siblings and cousins
who stand outside a Melbourne cinema
in May 1968 complaining about confusion,
I am silent.
The psychedelic racing, sliding, tilting
kaleidoscopic shafts of light, blossoming,
melding galaxies, auroras, filaments, globules,
many-coloured landscapes, frozen
screams and blinking eyes
all makes sense.
The stargate journey ending in a hotel suite
of French architecture and austere lighting,
the alien zoo-laboratory where Dave Bowman
puzzles perspective from age to advancing age
as he settles into solitary luxury
all makes sense.
The fourth appearance of the monolith, a dying
Bowman stretching out his hand towards it,
the birth of the Starchild, its enigmatic gaze
as it floats vast above our Earth
all makes sense.
I know nothing of Michelangelo’s Adam and God,
of Homer’s Odyssey, and this doesn’t matter.
The film opens me to origins, purpose, mystery,
a gaping monolith teeming with stars,
a silence I can plunge into,
no stranger now.
A Shadow Less
Each day towards death
I try to discard at least
one cage of thought:
books hoarded to help
riddle knowledge, time,
the trap of mastery
knickknacks and clothing
that no longer quicken
the face I always hide
how I carry the past
like a shield, a cross,
an accusation
how ageing aches and flaws
of mind and body rage
against themselves
how I plunge the future
into a deepening light
or a searing dark
why each day can’t blossom
without gain or loss
why each day can’t blossom
Stone Appeal
Clochmabenstane, Scotland, 17 October 2016
I circle the huge granite standing stone sunwise
three times, as my ancestors did long before
the designs of cranes and coins, of theory.
‘Tell me how and what they thought.’
No answer but the wheeling murmuration
of a thousand starlings. A stubble field.
‘Tell me what their gods showed them.’
The western wind eddies and shivers.
Sun sheen on distant water.
‘Tell me what to do next.’
Yellow moss creeps across three sides.
Rock warms to my embrace. A new vow.
Losing Weight
Most had eaten less, and healthier, food and exercised regularly
Jane Fritsch
Ten per cent of people who try
to lose weight succeed, usually
after multiple attempts,
the threat of stroke, heart attack,
degenerative diseases and the lure
of quality of life doing their thing
But now, and in the future,
bigger health threats: extreme weather,
crop failures, water greed, plagues
Assuming 100 per cent of us even try
to lose our weight of car fumes,
air conditioners, plastics,
comfort food and goods,
will a success rate of 10 per cent
be enough for future quality of life:
our grandchildren breathing clean air,
drinking fresh water, living long enough
to provide for their grandchildren?
Earth thrives on multiple attempts
yet cares less for success or failure:
dinosaurs, Neanderthals, now us…
Spelling the Piper
There are no pied pipers in this city
To lead us to our promised land
Where