online gazette 193 May 2020

Tasmanian Europa Poets Gazette No 193 May 2020

 

 

 

 

Some of the earlier poets outside Café Europa, Burnie

 

In order of appearance

Mary Kille

Kathryn Conlin

Yvonne Matheson

Michael Garrad

Judy Brumby-Lake

June Maureen Hitchcock

Robbie Taylor

Joe Lake

Artwork by Joe Lake

 

Mary Kille

 

Supplie by Mary Kille

Reprinted during Spanish flu pandemic, 1919

 

And people stayed at home

And read books

And listened

And rested

And did exercises

And made art and played

And learned new ways of being

And stopped and listened

More deeply

Someone meditated, someone prayed

Someone met their shadow

And people began to think differently

And people healed

And in the absence of people who

Lived in ignorant ways

Dangerous, meaningless and heartless,

The Earth also began to heal

And when the danger ended and

People found themselves,

They grieved for the dead

And made new choices

And dreamed of new visions

And created new ways of living

And completely healed the Earth

Just as they were healed.

(Kathleen O’Mara, 1869)

 

The Benison Of Books

(Or keeping sane in a time of stress)

 

Browsing through beloved books

Of history and mystery,

Psychology, tautology,

I made without apology

My personal anthology.

 

Biology, ecology,

Geology, theology,

Doxology, sexology,

Neology, zoology,

And even anthropology.

 

This was an opportunity

Presented with impunity,

To venture into unity,

With friends in my community.

 

For books have the capacity

Especially in audacity,

To nurture our sagacity,

When read with perspicacity.

 

I studied works poetical,

Polemical and ethical,

And even hypothetical,

And physical and quizzical.

 

I disregard pomposity,

And hate excess verbosity

And overt grandiosity,

But value virtuosity.

 

I cherish works of clarity,

Eschewing all vulgarity,

Love charity, hilarity,

And joyous jocularity.

 

To save me from senility,

And cerebral fragility,

My books are the facility

To give me the ability

To face up to the future

With a measure of tranquillity.

 

Mary Kille

 

 

 

 

Grateful

 

Little things in life really count

An unexpected gift

A small flower from a small child.

The thought that counts.

 

Something makes us happy

Beauty of life

Simple moments

We all are grateful for something

Something is there to make us happy.

 

Yvonne Matheson

 

 

 

 

 

Michael Garrad

 

 

 

 

Sound Of Shadows

 

The sound of shadows echoes in dapple sunlight

Brushes very coloured petal.

Resonates on every yielding leaf.

Dances on every blade of cushion grass.

Living rhythm now and eternal,

Protecting, nurturing, cooling, hiding,

A refuge in the flickering.

Feel those sweet shadows under blue.

Hear them kiss every gentle, stout bough.

Solitude in sublime frenzy of silence.

 

Michael Garrad March 2020

 

Place Between

 

In the sorrow land, we weep,

This place between,

The now and the beyond,

Where grief thrives on every regret,

That late time out of each,

When eyes could touch jewel moment,

And a word belonged, not spoken,

Tears are death’s torment,

For nothing exists in the breathing, except us,

How we beg for ourselves, selfish,

To be the being of,

To snatch at the passing,

To hold captive against eternity,

To indulge when other soul cries freedom.

 

Michael Garrad February 2020

 

 

Missing

 

Miss her voice,

Missed her last breath,

Miss her faint smile,

Missed her final heartbeat,

Miss her glance,

Missed the tremor of her passing.

Miss her touch,

Missed the thought I could read,

Miss the dream,

Missed the pained goodbye,

Miss being there,

Missed time that froze,

Miss her eyes,

Missed the hope that begged,

Miss her each day,

Missed the chance that slipped,

Miss quiet two of us.

Missed those years in flight,

Miss the haven that is her,

Missed what could have been,

Miss her.

Michael Garrad June 2019

 

 

 

Kathryn Conlin:

 

The Southerly

 

The sky fills with wonder, of vapour and crystals…

And visible shapes that amaze,

They form in the air for their own entertainment,

Contorting…distorting with phase.

 

Cumulonimbs, the mother of clouds

Diversely now padding the sky,

In 3D and 4D, these thunderhead storms

Are rebels that come from high.

 

Synergy, clouds with their moisture built in

Washing the planet with rain

From their palette above to the painting below

As the billow mutate, yet again.

 

A rainbow develops, as though signing its art.

The frame becomes wider with view.

The final scene can never repeat,

As all things develop anew.

 

 

 

The Observer

 

From my high rocky ledge,

I can look up

Towards a stairway to the stars –

Or down, and see my whole life

Laid out before me –

Like a distant dream.

 

June Maureen Hitchcock

 

 

 

Robbie Taylor

 

Silverside

 

When mum cooked silverside

She would soak it overnight.

Dad said if you soak it,

It tasted ‘just right’.

When my brother saw the meat,

He thought it was clothes in soak,

So he added a spoon of salt

And a cup of powdered soap.

Mum was in a panic

She didn’t know what to do.

‘Who could have done this,

Was it your brother or was it you?’

Dad had endured the Depression

And mum had survived the Blitz.

So dad took the hunk of meat

And hosed off the soapy bits.

So, later mum cooked the silverside

And we had it for tea that night.

Despite the added salt and powdered soap,

It tasted, ‘just right’.

 

A Fragment

 

She doesn’t remember,

The aggression, the desperation, the beatings.

Which, he said, were brought on by her?

Because he couldn’t bear to be challenged,

In the war he used her as a shield, later he played dead,

Although, sometimes, she remembers the good times,

Then she closes her eyes and holds this image

For a moment.

 

 

 

The Apple Tree  (A sonnet)

 

It’s time for apple trees to go to sleep

When varied colours change their leaves to die

From weary branches that have lost their grip

The tree stands naked, reaching for the sky.

 

My life has fallen too, it’s drained away

As autumn now has fallen on my grief

And slowly creeps the cold on shortened day,

A blessing that the time of pain seems brief.

 

As I expect my life to drain away

Towards the soil that needs its nourishment

As turning Earth draws me and makes me pay,

Dismembered by creation’s banishment.

 

Then I may contemplate this precious time –

To love – and make my final days diving.

 

 

 

 

Judy Brumby-Lake

 

Another ANCAC day has been and gone

Businessmen are busy thinking ways to make a dollar.

Tills ring on once enemy land

As Australian tourists walk among the nameless headstones.

Youth of today has little knowledge of

The Kokoda Trail

Or the day when Curtin defied Churchill’s demands

And helped to defend this great nation.

Some say, no need to dwell on events of the past

But the reality is that veterans’ relationships

Are doomed to failure

For the war robs the man of himself

And left him with a deceptive, dual personality.

Óne of happiness

And one of sadness reveals itself,

Sometimes the dark of the night

Or during stress drives loved ones away

 

These veterans have no need for a diary,

For their war experience has been deeply engraved in their minds.

 

And movie makers smile as they count their dollars

From another horror war movie,

Even though the movie may be rated ‘R’.

To a veteran it is kid’s stuff,

For the true horror of war

Could never be revealed on the movie screen.

 

Simple folk and politicians say

That veterans get too much,

Although they may not be right, money compensation

Won’t rid the mind of monsters that dwell within

Or remove the grief that is felt for buddies

Who were deprived of manhood.

 

And to prove our respect for the ANZACs,

And while the veterans live in the horror of the past,

And stand in queue line for their pensions.

We allowed flags to be flown half-mast on Australian soil

In 1989 to honour the death of Emperor Hirohito-

The man who was in power at the time of the slaughter of

Australian soldiers during World War 2.

ANZAC day will always come and go.

(first published in 1989)

Let's Rap, Joe Lake, pastel on paper

The Wave, Joe Lake, pastel on paper.

 

Her and her shadow, Joe Lake, pastel on paper.

Dream, Joe Lake, acrylic on canvas

What're yah lookin at? Joe Lake, pastel on paper.

Embarrassed, Joe Lake, pastel on paper

Send your short poems to

lakej5263@gmail.com