Verses to brighten your day.
Tribute to Mark
The darkness of the garden Had nought to do with light Two middle-aged men, sitting Staring at anything but each other As if connecting eyes would confirm And hasten the prognosis Sombre mood, impending loss Uncertainty and fear … but stoic … People depend on us
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Poetry: Folly bizarre
FOLLY BIZARRE Do you hear them? Hark! Listen to them chatter keeping back the dark; nor does it matter much what they say holding back despair: try another way throw another party form another pair; Alex sounds so hearty but Diana isn’t there! Sarah’s gone with William he swept her off her feet, Polly didn’t like it but it had been her whim – alternative and ethnic – to do Nepal with Lucky Jim. And look, do look at Katie massaging Tristan’s feet! Karl’s into iridology, Eddie takes his whisky neat. Amanda’s seeing auras and trying ESP – it’s highly promising, you see. Yes, what a lark, keeping back the dark and this, too, is oh such fun frying slowly in the sun sizzling flesh persuaded tan, the leaner chest…
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Poetry: Lest We Forget
Lest We Forget Till the daffodils glow for the jonquils know and the roses rise again, I’ll scan the skies in the world of your eyes washed in the greyness the softness of rain. They tell us the godwits will come again and spring will be sprung once more. And once more yet, lest we forget a child will knock on our door. Yes, they tell us a child will come again when the land is wasted and still they tell us he’ll climb through a burnt-out land to the top of a black, scorched hill. He’ll look to the East and you look to the West and he’ll call on the wind those who loved the land best… and a small spear of green, will yearn upwards, just seen,…
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Poetry: The Blechynden Bach
THE BLECHYNDEN BACH You by the heater and I, in the chair, but where were the other three who should have been there, curled up on the couches sprawled on a bed? From a sleeping bag pokes out just one tousled head. It’s Finn in a dreamland of raspberry drops and lemonade longing to wake and see the ice stand thick on the streams in the river glade land. But where are the others? Where are the brothers? We called ourselves we – we were a family: where are we? Silence holds its breath, as always if you’re asking why… The night is so quiet; not a cloud in the sky. Only the river whispers by. Amy Brooke “Blechynden Bach” is a fishing cottage by Black Valley Stream in Nelson…
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POETRY: The Death of Innocence
POETRY THE DEATH OF INNOCENCE Dark clouds roll over the Canterbury Plains To end the summer’s dry Though water comes not from the rains But from the tears we cry People we’ve taken to our hearts Are cut down one by one As our nation’s innocence is split By the thunder of the gun Fifty innocent souls are gone Torn from their families’ arms They came to our land of sun and song Where their families faced no harm But hatred knows no borders Down its deadend path And the assault on peace and order Tore these families clean in half Bodies all lie scattered In this place of peace and prayer But Martyrs are now rising From the lost ones lying there As the dust all settles A new…
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HAL G.P. COLEBATCH, 1949-2019: IN MEMORIAM
by Jeffry Babb I do not wish to write an obituary for Hal Colebatch. That has already been done. On this, the first anniversary of his passing, I will seek to place Colebatch in the context of his life and times. Hal was the son of Sir Hal Colebatch. Sir Hal was a renaissance man, who dragged himself up by his bootstraps. In his biography of his father, Steadfast Knight (Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2004), Hal traces the Colebatch line back almost to the Norman Conquest. The only notable ancestor turned out to be Sir Polydore Colebatch, a bold privateer; in other words, a pirate. Sir Hal was born in 1872. He was Premier of Western Australia for one month in 1919. He was a member of the WA Legislative…
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