Birds overhead and the rain sweeping violently over the roof in sprays snatched by the winds and torn away then lashed on the rooftops again. Birds fly over giggling and calling as they pass. The cat doesn’t like it. Meows a startled birdish chirrup and jogs over to me. In the left ear gas burning in muted and droning roar. To the right the rain dashed on the window glass spittered closer than the swirling roar inside the walls beneath the ceiling. Birds call overhead again these screeching and squarked calls bickering as they go. Now footsteps in another house’s hallway (though there’s nobody home) thumping they vibrate through the floorboards and rumble in the floors. No voices only the birds calling and bickering and giggling as they go.
Tag: nature
After Sunfall.
Up above, from tall, invisible trees, two birds call-and-answered in delicate, dawn-like song. There was a crisp freshness to the air that like the birds spoke of morning. The sky was the shade of holiday-beginnings — of taxis caught under early-morning skies. On this topsy-turvy day, tilting at the turn of the seasons, I could almost smell the blossom promised by the bare, sticky branches of the neat street-trees. Their austere nude winter limbs were soon to be transformed into fleeting beauties, dressed in sweet pink tulle, white lace, and glinting emerald buds. In the garden, winter-blooming bulbs perfumed the air, sweet and cloying. They’d pushed themselves inevitably onwards, upwards, through the soil and the old weathered wood-chips and the nights’ frosts. I’d watched them growing, determined and mysterious, and wondered who had planted them and how long ago. Once close enough to the sun they sprung into tight white clusters of pretty, simple flowers and bravely sang of spring while the winter raindrops clung coldly to the air.
Legacy.
If we are all to die
the cornfields left quite cornless
the wheat-fields, withered, dry
the oceans without fishes
the waterline too high
if we too are just drifters
we are subject to the tides
can be drowned beneath the waters
as tempers and temperatures rise
if we are to go under
then first let’s reach the skies
let us bathe in truest moonlight
hear the sweetest lullabies
let us drift in currents wondrous
let us dance together tight
let us say we won’t go quietly
let us say we lived our lives
but in the noise still listen
still learn to read the signs
still stop to think and keep our heads
heed the worries of the night
stop to listen to our children
because they are getting wise
we said they were the future
they've seen right through that lie
we said children are the future
so let us, please, just try!
to understand that we are
as much the free, as much the truly wild
as fishes in the waters
as birds on brilliant skies
as mushrooms blooming nightly
as winging butterflies
as great old eucalyptus
as flower, stem, and vine
and let us please remember
that we are all to die
and children are the future
please let us only try!
to leave the oceans cleaner
to leave the jungles high
to leave the doorways open
to leave the windows wide
let us read the books and write them
keep true memory live
let us hope that there’s forgiveness
that there’s an afterlife
let us hope some higher spirit
has kindness on its mind
hope we haven’t quite lost contact
lost grip, lost voice, lost sight
when we forgot that we’re earth’s children
we lost our power, lost our right
to tell the future’s children
that we know better than the light
know why it breaks in early morning
better than the night-stars bright
that we know better than this planet
because we have our satellites
have worlds here in our pockets
have access day and night
to endless lies or knowledge
to living byte-by-byte
we’ve forgotten it’s not normal
to find love by swiping right
forgotten how to speak the truth
without hatred, without spite
forgotten fear begets regret
fosters war, and famine, flight
forgotten that we all are one
that we needn’t take a side
we needn’t call each other, other
choose only left or right
we needn’t think we are alone
needn’t think in terms of might
then maybe, only maybe
we’ll find safety in the golden flickered light
of fire and easy company
find what our DNA desires
find common pain, and common scars
from common wounds of life
and from those bonds, build something
that makes our time worthwhile.
Rain Landing.
Land on head-tops caught uncovered.
Land on lips and tongues stuck-out.
Mike, the Smoking Monstera.
incense streams smoke
up along the stem
clinging to a branch
and is diffused
through the leaves
rising in ladders
wish-washed
and drawn upward
through their holes
Botany.
Monstera Mike grew wider and taller and spread forth great leaves that cleaved themselves with holes, bright limish when young, maturing to a deeper rainforest green. He spat stems willy nilly and leaned into the sunlight, sprawling himself luxuriantly through the air.
Glow.
it is always there
though not always within vision
of course
for only sparkling minds
see the sparkles in their skies
but sparkling once alight
and tools within our grasp
and all other elements
being right
without brokenness
or shadows
without question-marks
or slow-downs
and in shameless consort
we say: glow
and glow it does at our command
and from our fingers rise
roaming scents of pure fragrance
made tangible
and true.
Acceptance.
Waterdrops would waddle down the hillside every morning, following the path laid down by his ancestors in many years gone by. Each day, he descended—drawn by habit, by the patterns sewn into his life, with no qualms, no questions to be pondered—and each evening, he returned. It did not occur to Waterdrops to consider the question that occurs to you and I—why?—and so, daily, he wandered up and down the hill, was warmed beneath the sun, and gently, surely, with no hopes nor fears to fill, lived out his quiet life.
The Tree That Felt Disquiet.
So the magpie swept up to his high branch, wings buffeted by the warm summer gusts. His tree grew old and tall at the top of the cutting, at its very edge, where the little cliff of scraggly bushes dropped suddenly down to the four sets of tracks and the log yard. It was a pale, silvery gum, straight-trunked with few branches, each one sturdy and clustered with large, long, thin leaves that shifted in colour from apple green in youth to faded bottle in middle-age and to a palette of spotted purples and greys as they grew ready to fall. Along with its dry leaves, it dropped unusually large gumnuts that, falling from a great height, cracked and spilled seeds that went scuttling over the pavement. The magpie had seen many trains pass on the tracks below him, but the gumtree in its long lifetime had seen many more. The tree had heard many voices, and wondered many things. Chief among its thoughts at that moment was an attempt to comfortably explain the growing nagging sensation it felt of some mounting, rumbling energy in the air. Had the world become faster, these trains more frequent, or was it the tree that had slowed?
2016. / Rise.
A place of fleeting shallows,
of waters rising roughly with the tides,
and shortly draining all away.
Where notions rise as bottles on a pollute sea,
and are tossed about on wavelengths,
let loose upon the noisy air,
to fall again, silent, into the water.
A time of rising disbelief,
leaving warships of old glory-stripped,
their hulls bored through beneath our vision,
to sink under their mutiny.
When a whispered word means more
than a thousand voices pounding on the sky
in thunderclaps of protest.
A world of red-lit nights,
the falling sun casting colours on the sea,
and making shadows for their working.
Where lightening rises from the ground,
to spread its violence to the cloud,
pierces through, and the rain brought tumbling
tastes of acid on the tongue.
A time of desperate villains, desperate men,
whose desperation breeds contempt for laws of nature,
and plants the seeds of lies, to rise
as lofty trees, fed pesticides and time.
When calls for justice are lost into the air,
made quiet in the rising roar, the winds,
and in the winds the voices melt,
and all hands are lost at sea.
Magical: Day One 