Thursday, September 20, 2012

Poem for the Day - Dog at the Crossroads (from The Irish Suite) ©

Dog at the Crossroads

All knowledge, the totality of all questions and all answers is

contained in the dog. Franz Kafka

A kelpie-cross waits at crossroads, morning

to dusk. At dusk wet from the mist, and in the

morning the breeze chilling her back.

Snout to damp grass, she hears an oak tree quivering

the volume of it, a distant grating on stones.

Ears in the dignity of listening.

Her back twitches with a horsefly touch, sending

a shudder to the base of her tail.

Two horses in a nearby paddock are nothing.

Three geese on the lake are nothing.

Chickens at the back door are nothing.

Only people matter.

Someone passes her pooled eyes,

caught in that outward stare.

Prescience shows on her face

as if she is one of Pavlov’s dogs.

Two gates are pulled backward like oars.

One hand waves her on, two hands

click the latch, behind.

Her tail tracks like a metronome,

her legs swoop into the long grass,

her body braids a pathway, loosening vines.

There are things that you do not know.

The privacy of her.

The way she travels into shadows, or milkweed,

those second thoughts before a walk or run.

Is that her silence echoing back from a measured stealth?

When the sun sinks into the blue tops of trees

and mist rings the valley, she turns halfway to laid scents,

runs back to the crossroads, the curve of lake

with the lights on it, to the paddocks of horses,

the same patch, and her body in it.

Feminist Graphics for the Day

Poem for the Day: Saucy

Saucy

This man with the sauce bottle
has great hands
his shirt a neon sign
but it suits his silver hair
carved, brushed skin.

I imagine undressing him
in a room
where he smiles
etches information
into our private sleep.

Perhaps we're drinking coffee
from each other's lips
buying chips and fish
enjoying layers of the day.

Then I return to my first draft
of Lake-side Friends.
The rest of my poem
I gift to him.

Poem for the Day: Black Hairy Caterpillar (from Miniscule) ©

Black Hairy Caterpillar

After the charge around the room,
the black caterpillar curled not to move,
I walked away without knowing if he
would turn around, stick his tongue out.

The weight he pulls is heavy
all those legs underneath, the tall
assemblage of hairs, flashing red face
navigating a wall with no ears.

He goes forward with timid stiffness,
climbs down to the floor, door opening.
He starts to run, sliding first, his body
bowing up like a Greek symbol.

I couldn't hold him back. Could you?
Beating the air with his tiny heart,
dreaming of a windswept courtyard
of quiet, of space, of leaf matter.

When I least expect, he's back.
No change on his face, legs and hairs
spread along the gutter. Will he fall?
Be swallowed by some greedy mouth?

I think of the creatures of Sylvia Plath.
The ones she wrote in a poem. Would
she say? 'The weight of his life is small.
Let be. Let be.'

Poem for the Day: Lost Property by Tracy Ryan

Lost Property

To be alone in the wide room

In the house’s crooked elbow, turning point

For extensions as the family grew

And grew – and grew – to be alone in the one room

Nobody needed now, though it might be resumed

Like land, for guests or blow-ins, at any moment,

Without notice (and that was part of

The appeal, the very tenuous feel of the place), to play there

At five or six to be immersed though not safe among the things

That proceeded you, immediate and limitless,

Everything already there, the way the world went on

Before you were thought of, the flux, and your small-child

Leisure for introspection while others shinnied trees for the same

Sense of endless outlook, here,

In this would-be attic brought down to earth, whose breath

Was frosty on Mother Shipton’s well, holding the tossed refuse

Of older siblings, stages shrugged off: limp tutus, ping as dropped

Gum blossom, too big, though you stepped

Into them and stood, as if in a fairy ring you might animate:

Satin and tapshoes, toe-shoes from a sister’s long gone bit-part

In Hans Christian Andersen, poems called Off the Shelf

That you avidly grabbed for your own, puzzled

At faded marginal doodles in real ink:

Dark ocarina whose holes you could never master,

Bakelite cracked, spookily fake-organic,

As if a new kind of reptile had laid it,

And a distant, shadowy instrument, lipped, where fingers should sit,

With verdigris your father later chastised you for rubbing –

An oboe perhaps – resisting your grip, but venting

A slow corruption in you as descant,

Its distant kin in this vast orchestral silence:

Strange octagon you toyed with that would never quite close or open,

Squeeze box, little lung resisting pressure, push and draw, your hands

Impeded from fully parting or meeting, stretching

In musical secretion, cat’s cradle ectoplasm,

Crimped membrane so vulnerable to puncture,

It made you wince, lantern-thin but giving sound

For illumination. At last: harmonica, cupped, bracketed but not

For all that an afterthought, heart of the whole unpeopled

Space, for the way it moulded to your own small wheeze

And gave it a different life, if a pleasure to the player only,

Pleasure to make your mouth water, metal, felt, and papery

Velvet, though your brother might shudder

At the old spit he imagined pooled there,

To your it was honeycomb,

Striving to isolate each note, then giving up,

As if you had many voices at once, speaking in chords,

And could make yourself heard.

- Tracy Ryan

Reading my Poetry at the Moon Cafe, 22nd Sept 2012

I will be reading my poetry from my new collection "of Arc & Shadow" at the Perth Poetry Club on Saturday, 22nd September: 2-4pm. Venue: The Moon Cafe, 323 William Street, Northbridge. Poets are usually given a 10 minute time slot and I will also be appearing with Alan Hancock, a new voice in poetry. My selection may even include, dah, dah! Purple Swamphens. Check out their other guests for September through to November, 2012. http://www.perthpoetryclub.com/22-sep-helen-hagemann-alan-hancock-joanna-neave
All welcome!