23 Weeks

Tags

Abortion in Australia, Australian poet, poem, poetry, Triolet

𝟐𝟑 𝐖𝐞𝐞𝐤𝐬

It’s 3 and 20 weeks I’m aiming for;
If I can live till then I may survive.
To not end up discarded blood and gore,
It’s 3 and 20 weeks I’m aiming for.
I’m hiding in my bunker — this is war,
And I’ll be lucky to emerge alive.
It’s 3 and 20 weeks I’m aiming for;
If I can live till then I may survive.

— D.N. O’Brien

No questions asked abortion up to 22 weeks

Sonnet for a Tree

Tags

Australian axemen, Australian poet, Australian traditional poetry, Bloodwood tree, Corymbia gummifera, Formal poetry, poem, poetry, Red Bloodwood tree, sonnet, Spenserian sonnet, Split posts, Tree felling

𝐒𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐚 𝐓𝐫𝐞𝐞

Upon a hill there stood a bloodwood tree;
A mighty tree — limbs spread against the sky.
That bloodwood from its crown looked down on me,
As I would gaze upon a feeble fly.
No danger did it see — surely not I
Could threaten it, could bring it to the ground.
And so the tree dismissed me with a sigh —
A rustling of its leaves — a mournful sound.
Its trunk, it was three yards at least around,
For it was old — but I was young and so
My thoughts were of its use when it was downed;
I had a fence to build, a crop to grow.
And many posts from that great log I’d split.
My axe was razor-sharp, and deep it bit.

— D.N. O’Brien

Taboo

Tags

Ancient man, australian aboriginal, Australian Aboriginal laws, Australian bush poetry, Australian poet, poem, poetry, sonnet, Spenserian sonnet, Stone age man, Taboo, totems and taboos, Tribal societies

Taboo

You ask me, how on earth did he survive
For many centuries? Well here’s a clue:
For more than needed, never did he strive.
His little wealth he carried, his needs few.
He stuck to the old ways and nothing new
Would he allow. So for thousands of years
He didn’t change — for change it was taboo.
Paralysis by superstitious fears —
This saved him. Round the fire at night wise seers
Would tell the dreamtime myths — his history,
Unquestioned by his trusting eyes and ears.
And thus did he remain fearful, not free.
Bound tight by rigid rules that would not bend,
His world would stay unchanged — else it would end.

— D.N. O’Brien

Leaving Gondwana

Tags

australia, Australian poet, Centrifugal Force, Continental Drift, Gondwana, Gondwanaland, poem, poetry, sonnet, Spenserian sonnet

Leaving Gondwana

Now all alone, north-east it slowly drifts.
Just inch by inch the mighty mass it slides.
An island of gigantic size — it shifts,
As on its shores now beat the timeless tides.
Upon a sea of molten rock it glides;
It slips — it’s driven by a starry force —
An engine that within its body hides,
Propelling it far from its primal source.
It journeys on a strange uncharted course,
Escaping from its motherland; its home
Now far behind, yet it feels no remorse —
Young continents, like children, tend to roam.
No trail it leaves; there is no wake to west.
It never tires, and never will it rest.

— D.N. O’Brien

A Universal Question

Tags

Agnosticism, Atheism, Australian poet, Creation of the Universe, God, poem, poetry, Science and the universe, sonnet, Spenserian sonnet

𝐀 𝐔𝐧𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐚𝐥 𝐐𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧

We sit upon a whirling tilted sphere,
That hurtles through a vacuum at high speed.
And if you don’t think this is rather queer,
You are my friend, a strange fellow indeed.
The Sun (an atom bomb) it is agreed,
We circle once a year. A satellite,
The moon we call it — like a silver bead,
It shines upon us on a moonlit night.
The stars above on starry nights give light,
And shooting stars sometimes at night they fall,
And though they are to us a splendid sight,
They’re meteors — not really stars at all.
Who set in motion this great cosmic dance?
Or could it all have happened just by chance?

— D.N. O’Brien

Let There be Light!

Tags

Australian poet, Big Bang Theory, Creation of the Universe, Formal poetry, poem, poetry, Singularity, sonnet, Spenserian sonnet

Let There be Light!

The singularity is now complete.
Contained — the building blocks of gas and rock.
The Master Builder rises from His seat
And sets to midnight its celestial clock.
But time’s timepiece will neither tick nor tock
Until the detonation — till the blast.
The Builder nods — the shackles, they unlock;
The force that held the seething mass is cast
Aside — no longer is the bomb held fast,
As now the point of no return is reached.
And so the future will be as the past,
As boundaries are broken, blasted, breached.
Exploding outward does the matter race,
Constructing rock and gas and time and space.

— D.N. O’Brien

Dusk on the Farm in Winter

Tags

Australian poet, poem, poetry, Shadorma

Dusk on the Farm in Winter

Night falling,
soft-lowing cattle
walk slowly
single file.
A cold westerly blowing.
The shutters rattle.

— D.N. O’Brien

Killing Time

Tags

Australian poet, Formal poetry, poem, poetry, Triolet

𝐊𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐓𝐢𝐦𝐞

The farmer deals with death most every day.
Without death there would be no milk or meat.
The young are mostly shot or sent away —
The farmer deals with death most every day.
“But killing’s cruel!”, the well-fed people say —
The farmer says: “I kill, so you may eat”.
The farmer deals with death most every day.
Without death there would be no milk or meat.

— D.N. O’Brien

Filling the Vacuum

Tags

Aristotle, Atheism, Australian poet, Baal, Formal poetry, Friedrich Nietzsche, God is Dead, Odin, poem, poetry, sonnet, Spenserian sonnet, The Gay Science, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Zeus

Filling the Vacuum

“God is dead.” So Nietzsche’s often quoted.
The atheists will say that’s what he said.
And he did, but it should too be noted
That Nietzsche said it with a sense of dread —
That we had killed Him — it was on our head
He laid the blame. And what, he asked, what thing
Replaces murdered gods, gods cold and dead?
The bells in church towers will no longer ring,
And all those hymns? Why will the choirs still sing
Of Him, when He no longer is of use?
A fallen deity, a banished king,
Devoid of power, like Baal, Odin, or Zeus.
And Nature does an empty space abhor —
Rush in, the gods of mammon and of war.

— D.N. O’Brien

Everlasting Quest

Tags

Ancient Persian Mythology, Australian poet, Australian traditional poetry, Formal poetry, Huma Bird or Bird of Paradise, poem, poetry, Quest, Sufism, The bird with no feet

𝐄𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐐𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭

The bird with no feet makes its nest
In a cloud — there it pauses for rest,
And one egg does the little bird lay,
For one bird must replace it one day.
To just one, all its life, it gives birth;
To soar high — when it falls to the Earth.

— D.N. O’Brien

Quest