The Hunter

Tags

Australian Aboriginals, Australian bush poetry, Australian poet, Australian traditional poetry, Bush Poetry, Formal poetry, Gidgee - Acacia cambagei, Hunter, poem, poetry, Woomera

Stands motionless, with spear haft thrust
Into the desert’s scarlet dust.
Upon one leg, foot on one knee,
Dark eyes through shimmering heat-haze see

Blurred forms towards him leap and bound
Across scorched plains of arid ground.
His muscles flex as ends his wait.
The lance is raised and now too late

The mob explodes in mortal fear
As woomera launches the spear
Of gidgee hardened by the flame;
Its flight is true and so his aim.

One kangaroo, gore-splattered grey;
A feast, his tribe will have this day.
He draws his weapon from the dead;
The jagged point glistens blood-red.

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Blessed Birds

Tags

Australian poet, Birds, Formal poetry, King Parrots, poem, poetry, sonnet, Spenserian sonnet

Blessed Birds

It’s said that life is suffering, yet birds
That come to my backyard don’t suffer so.
They seem quite happy, speaking, not with words,
But songs, of chirps and whistles – they don’t know
What lies in store for them – each day they go
About their business with no thought of what
May come. And when in winter, chill winds blow,
They don’t complain, nor when the wind blows hot.
Perched in a tree, the future matters not –
They sing, for they are blessed with tiny brains;
Have not the power to worry, plan or plot.
It’s true they look bedraggled when it rains,
But soon they shake their feathers and they’re dry.
And though they don’t think deeply…..they can fly.

{Photo – D.N. O’Brien}

Cycles

Tags

Australian poet, Cycles, Formal poetry, Italian sonnet, Petrarchan sonnet, poem, poetry, Rise and Fall, sonnet

Cycles

All things that rise up to a peak must fall.
Even the tallest towers of Earth’s empires.
The strongest life-force, given time it tires
And slows and dies – it matters not at all.
A being or a mountain or a wall,
Churches and mosques with heaven-pointing spires –
They all must yield to death, to rain and fires;
All things will be brought low, that now are tall.
The rocks will one day all be ground to dust.
New rocks will rise and reach towards the sky.
The world will once again be clothed in ice,
And steel that girds the world will turn to rust.
Yet what is low, in turn will be brought high,
Until the time comes for its sacrifice.

Sunset in Winter

Tags

Australian bush poetry, Australian poet, Australian traditional poetry, Formal poetry, poem, poetry, sunset

Sunset in Winter

The amber glow as day begins to die,
Behind a darkened hill that lies to west,
Where trees that silhouette against the sky
March on like lines of soldiers on its crest.

And where the amber meets the fading blue,
And tinges it with golden streaming light,
With painted colours these last rays imbue
The western sky, before the fall of night.

Quest

Tags

Australian poet, Australian traditional poetry, Bird with no feet sleeps on the wind, Days of being wild movie, Formal poetry, Orpheus Descending, poem, poetry, Song lyrics, Tennessee Williams, The bird with no feet

Quest

There’s a bird with no feet – only wings,
And it sleeps on the wind, and it sings
All day long as it travels the skies,
And it lands only once – when it dies.

{I first came across “The bird with no feet” theme
in an obscure Chinese movie “Days of Being Wild”.
I believe it comes from the Tennessee Williams play “Orpheus Descending”,
but I think its origin may be much older.
I wrote this little poem after watching the Chinese movie.}

Frank Slide

Tags

Alberta, Australian poet, Canada, Canadian Rockies, Crowsnest Pass, Formal poetry, Frank Slide, Frank Slide poem, poem, poetry, Spenserian sonnet, Turtle Mountain

Don’t make your camp beneath its towering peaks.
So said the ancient ones – the mountain moans.
Sometimes it moves, sometimes it loudly speaks
Of grinding pain within its brittle bones.
And when it shivers it shakes loose the stones,
And down its furrowed flanks they swiftly roll.
Yet brave men turned a deaf ear to its groans,
And rushed to mine its gleaming seams of coal.
But Nature’s force no mortal men control,
And deep within – the mountain’s rocky heart
It broke, and terrible would be the toll;
For with a roar the east face fell apart.
And many who on that grey morning died,
Still sleep beneath the rubble of Frank Slide.

Frank Slide

Trace

Tags

Australian poet, Australian traditional poetry, death, Formal poetry, Ghosts, poem, poetry, Shades

The creaking of his empty chair.
In dead of night, a muffled moan.
A faint footfall upon the stair.

And though I know he’s cold as stone,
And too, I know there’s no one there,
These sounds I hear when we’re alone.

Rebound!

Tags

Australian poet, big bang, Big Bang Theory, Eternal Recurrence, Friedrich Nietzsche, Nietzschean philosophy, poem, poetry, Rebounding Universe, sonnet, Spenserian sonnet

Big Bang to Crunch – a singularity
It is once more. How many billion years
Have passed? Now but a point, but can it be
A point? – time stops, and space it disappears,
As physics’ laws break down and matter smears
Deep in this place that holds the galaxies
Compressed. Gone for an instant, reappears
The light – as bang! – the tortured matter flees
Its cell – exploding like a swarm of bees
Released from the confinement of their hive.
And what or who, in that split second frees
The future stars and suns, men still will strive
To know, here on this obscure planet Earth –
What force drives life, and death, and then….rebirth?

Corn

Tags

Australian bush poetry, Australian traditional poetry, Bush Poetry, corn, Dairy farming in Queensland, maize, poem, poetry

Corn was a crop that each spring we would sow,
And in the autumn pick and bag each row.
Hard work it was, but then we didn’t mind;
We’d fill the shed with all that it could hold;
The cobs we’d husk and to a fine meal grind,
To feed the milkers through the winter cold.

But on reflection now I shake my head;
My father, bless his soul, is now long dead.
By sixty he was bent, his body worn,
From all that grinding toil and sweat and pain.
Now he is gone and so too is the corn,
And houses stand where once were fields of grain.

Crunch!

Tags

Australian poet, Dark matter, Heat Death of the Universe, poem, poetry, Singularity, sonnet, Spenserian sonnet, The Big Crunch

So comes the end – expansion ceases now;
All heat has died; all matter is stone cold.
It’s reached as far as its laws will allow;
Now gravity, attractive force, takes hold.
For what seemed an eternity it rolled
Forever outward – now it is reversed.
For all things must return, when they are old,
To where they once began – so all are cursed.
From just a speck it into being burst;
Now to that point its body must return.
To that elusive place before the first
Fraction of time and space, now it must turn
And race – all matter, stuff of stars, to there
Must hurtle – every atom, to nowhere.