Issue 3
December 2024
MARILYN HUMBERT
Yulara – the town square
where the ghost gums gather
on-country women spread canvas squares
crushed ochre in small precise piles
red yellow orange
water to mix
a white clay paste.
all day, shade lessens
and lengthens
their brushes stroke and daub
ancient lore in dots and symbols
their life, their dreamtime stories
when bark canoes found this shore
when feet wandered songline trails
beside rivers, beneath stars.
today bitumen and gravel divides
wire and pickets corral
the ghosts of memory forests.
(Yulara is the village about 25kms from Uluru NT Australia, the place to stay when visiting Uluru. First Published Abstractaphy Initiative August 8th 2024)
Benediction
Red rock bleeds into cliffs
staining a serpentine path to the gap
where the white sand creek bed gleams,
we sit on the rim legs crossed
our voices raised in song
grace notes mingle
with pollen and red dust
of first nations stories.
Ancestors’ wanderings
oceans and plains to seek a home
among ghost gums and acacia
where winter sun warms blue sky.
We wait on the edge
for sunset’s fire to burn
our hymn of gratitude
into the rocks
at Trephina.
(Trephina Gorge is located in East MacDonnell Ranges NT. First Published Catchment – Poetry of Place Issue 1 2024.)
Not yet night
Overhead corella clouds fold and braid,
the flocks draw nearer jabbering all the while
on route to roost among dead eucalypts
beside a creek threading east.
This October late afternoon
ground mist flows over long shadows
between spindly trunks edging the road
as I pedal homeward. My heart beats
a steady rhythm to the push cadence—
parting the fog like Moses fleeing to the promised land.
To my right an ocean of wheat ebbs and flows
heads raised above the swells. I breathe in,
imagine the farmer’s face calculating bags per acre.
The ripening grain chatters with the breeze.
To the left purple thistle flowers sway causally
neglected like bruises against pale flesh—
what else lies unseen beneath this veil?
The first star grows brighter,
the mist thins,
the moon’s silvered eye
tracks higher, guiding me home.
(First Published – Brushstrokes V, Ros Spence Poetry Contest Anthology 2024.)
Marilyn Humbert lives on Darug and GuriNgai land in Berowra, NSW Australia. Her tanka and haiku appear in many International, Australian journals, anthologies and online. She is a member of the editing team for Echidna Tracks - Australian Haiku Journal. Her free verse poems have been awarded prizes in competitions, published in anthologies, journals and online.
HELEN BERSTEN
Wattamola Dreaming
They saw the sun was shining
And they felt the day was warm
And they saw the river rising
But they didn’t hear the storm.
Then the clouds came scudding over
And the sun was blocked from view
And they felt the pelting raindrops
But they didn’t get the clue.
They’d camped beside the river
Where the trees provided shade
But dark shadows followed always
With every move they made.
The banks were flooding swiftly
As the river spread so wide
And they were carried from their mooring
By the rushing of the tide.
“Why did we go with “Whatta-Hire?”
Young Minnie asked with teary eyes –
“they promised an idyll by the river
But they told us porky pies!
We should have gone with “Hire-a-Watta”
He would have seen us right.
The camping site’s now far behind us.
We’ll have to hang on through the night.”
When the sun rose in the morning
They’d drifted far away.
They bobbed upon the wide blue ocean
With nothing in their way.
The caravan, like Noah’s ark,
Had neither sunk nor split apart.
It rode the waves majestically.
It was a work of art.
Divine Doggerel
How odd is the human bod –
Supposed to have sprung from a sod
Devised and produced by God.
Yet really an evolutionary nod
To fish and other such cod.
Binary beings are we -
One head, one trunk like a tree.
Our limbs divide
Into branches each side
And our legs take root, you see.
One brain and a mouth
with a tube travelling south
that empties out into the sea.
Two ears, two eyes and a nose
With nostrils that never close.
Twin feeders and breeders
That often do lead us
into acts that we shouldn’t disclose.
If Adam had not had a rib
Would God have had to ad lib?
And instead of a mate maybe He’d make
One dog, one cat and one kid.
Helen Bersten, OAM, has been writing sporadically for over 60 years – mostly poetry and short stories. She has been included in the North Shore Poetry Project anthologies as well as The Lawson Room magazine and recently had some poems included in The Starbeck Orion, UK. She is an avid writer of letters to newspapers and enjoys solving crosswords and online jigsaw puzzles. Professionally, she is a trained librarian and has been a volunteer reader for Radio 2RPH for 20 years. She lives in Lindfield.
HENRI METCALFE
Tandem Narratives and Non sequiturs
Judy is
Stumbling through the bewilderness
Through overgrown undergrowth
Burgeoning branches ripe with memories
Drop their fruit
Which decompose and crumble
As she fumbles inside the shadowy folds of identity
Blossoms of emptiness
Scatter this landscape of confusion
A random tandem game
Of inarticulate longing
What remains?
Judy is handbag ready
She wants to go home.
In Memoriam
The children came home
His lamplit presence guided
their journey
of returning.
Burning memories
Spilling, spluttering
In the sprinkling rain,
As we walked up the hill together
trudging through the joy and pain
Of who had been lost
What was gained
How much was the cost
and what now remains.
And here, where it all begun
Floats the feather of a swan
On the Road to Cordoba
On the road to Cordoba
the moon rose
wearing sunglasses
Flowers
which can only appear
in children's dreams
did dance and sing and
your kiss
lingered on the rooftops
Standing here by the roadside
where the honey eaters wait
a mermaid's shadow
swims across the night
Life on the B side
After God
Destiny waits
Where the two rivers meet
Meanwhile in heaven
In a place where only the ghosts can find you
The tip of the whip
Is the love that draws blood
Memory makes demands we cannot keep
The fruits of perfection
Ripen and fall
In a pageantry of death
And in the silence of prayer
Clouds drop their flowers onto the valley of time
How can such a small person contain this void
Henri Metcalfe is a retired English teacher who lives, works and studies in the Cammereygal region of Sydney. Her interests include writing, everything Shakespeare, studying mysticism, and meeting friends for coffee. The first poem to have a profound effect on Henri was "The Forsaken Merman" by Matthew Arnold, read to her by her older sister. She was about five years old, yet something awakened in her which she could not articulate at the time, but she recognised as deeply important. This poem of longing and pain spoke directly to her emotions awakening her sympathy for the impossibility of this love and heartfelt loss as well as curiosity and confusion about the subject matter. In retrospect the confluence of rhyme, rhythm, biblical references, mythic resonances and deep emotion were yet to be analysed and absorbed, nevertheless Henri’s abiding love of poetry was born that day.
SARNIE HAY
Looking Back Over Luna Park
They arrive at the Lavender Bay bistro
Single souls searching for love—
stroking the air with an urgency
that resembles the fugue of ferries
scudding across the busy harbour
Victims of chance, on a ferris wheel
of bittersweet, rotating to dizzy heights
only to drop back down to earth
Bottle of red, bottle of white at the table
for over-fifties. I crouch like a tiger through
the stitched up crowd to find a quiet corner
on the balcony, overlooking Luna Park
The notes of a woody perfume
saunter past my quarrelsome senses
I swallow a long sip of red
twirl Spaghetti around the fork
Brush memories to the side
and all that desire—it’s much too much
When suddenly you slide in next to me
your knee pressing against mine
The Poet with the Paintbrush
(Arthur Boyd)
It’s all horizontal
in my room on The Bridge
Outside the arrhythmia of dawn
shivers in twills and warbles
Stroke by stroke verticality creeps
through the clear, cold-glass
as lanceolate light
takes the forest by surprise
I imagine Arthur heading for the river
wearing his paint-stained jumper
and old crumpled hat—
growing smaller with every step
Leaving a palette of colour
inscribed on the landscape
like words on a page—but words
were never needed in Bundanon
Once-Upon-A-Time
I stand in front of the mirror
holding a white silk-gown
I slip it gently over my head
and as it caresses my body
I sway from side to side—this was
how I looked the night we danced the bridal waltz
I tip my coupe, make a toast
Where there’s love there’s music, I repeat for the longest time
I wrap the dress in tissue paper
and leave it wed to an op-shop step
Behind me the street light casts a glow
The crescent moon appears lost in the glare
I’m light as a puppet
pulled along by strings of moonlight music
Sarnie’s poems have appeared in ‘The Intimacy of Strangers’, ‘Poetry Matters’, and Starbeck Orion, UK. In 2023 she released her book of poems “Rusty Nails and Goddesses”. Currently she coordinates the North Shore Poetry Collective.
BRIAN ADAMS
Salome
It is late-Spring.
The time when Winter
Surrenders to Summer.
The air is warm.
A light breeze,
Not yet moist,
Carries to me
The heady scent
Of Jasmine.
That fragrant herald
Of the heat to come.
An overture
To the symphony
Of Jacaranda.
The birds sing.
The insects buzz.
They are happy.
And so am I.
I am relaxing
On my veranda.
In my hand
A glass of Rosé.
De Provence
Naturellement.
I offer it
To the sunlight.
My reward
A petal’s blush.
After a gentle
Swirl or two,
I tilt the delicate vessel
To my lips.
A subtle floral bouquet,
A hint of nectarine
On the tongue,
A flint-dry finish.
I am happy.
And so are they.
Feeling drowsy,
I am drifting…drifting…
Suddenly and misteriously,
I am wide-awake.
And there she is,
Dancing naked
Before my eyes.
Brazenly flaunting
Her slender body,
Her gossamer wings.
The seven veils
Long-discarded.
She darts then hovers,
Up-and-down,
To-and fro,
Side-to-side.
She is happy.
And so am I.
Taunting me
With her crimson nudity,
Her shimmering iridescence.
This temptress, my Salome.
But, Sweet Jesus,
I am no John-The-Baptist.
She wilt not
Serve my severed head
On a silver platter, to Herod.
Mais attendez!
A suitor now appears,
Diverting her attention.
An Invitation to The Dance, to love.
An aerial courtship.
Sensually acrobatic.
Then suddenly,
They are gone.
To a celestial boudoir, methinks.
They are happy, even ecstatic.
And so am I.
Adieu Madamoiselle.
Demoiselle.
My Darling Damselfly.
The Martyr
dear
sweet
innocent
creature
so frail
so fragile
bright-eyed
bright yellow
together we descend
in our cages
down the shaft
to the coal
our miners’ wick lamps
lighten the black seam
and the black eyes
of our joyful saviour
lying on our bruised sides
we pick at the face
the dust clogging our lungs
masking our ghost-like faces
abruptly the singing ceases
we turn our lamps
she lies stiffly still
victim of the vapour
bag of foulness
signal to escape
lest an explosion
makes wives widows
she dies
we live
to sing
in choirs
brave
little
serinus
finch
Brian (aka Aramis) was born in 1944. As a retired engineer he now tries to write prose less technical: sometimes poetry of a social commentary nature.
GRAHAM WOOD
Bush Angels, Christmas
From passing train
garlanded
two angels stand:
roughcast
homespun -
tyres and hessian
clothing spines
of sapling.
Between bush angels
three children
cartwheel,
cavort with branch
and mistletoe
through loose shade
of summer gums.
There appeared
almost
five children at play
as the window
passed
and slid away
and all
of them
it seemed
had wings.
Bush Angels, Christmas (previously published in Of Moments and Days, by Graham Wood (Ginninderra Press, Port Adelaide, 2023)
Australiana
The Australian Crawl
No arse-licking here,
no cringing mistake –
full speed across water
the world in our wake.
The Australian Drawl
Long practice and climate
defying
clarity and flies.
The Australian Yawl
Our lunch in the esky,
a thermos of tea –
out in the tinny
with Girt by the sea.
Australiana (previously published in Australian Minuscule, by Graham Wood (Pocket Poets 160 –Chapbook, Ginninderra Press, Port Adelaide, 2021)
Mr Nespresso Steps Into a Lift
I enter the empty lift.
A female voice welcomes me
with the greeting: “George Cloonsey !”
I smile and say “Thank you”, secretly
chuffed she has recognised me.
I’ve been mistaken before of course,
both for Sean Connery and Harrison Ford,
seem to have a penchant for false
recognition as a movie star, though to date
no-one has mistaken me for Kate Winslet
or Scarlett Johansson.
When the lift reaches the bottom floor,
I realise regrettably the mistake
was probably mine, not hers -
a peccadillo of my fading hearing ...
unless this disembodied woman in the lift
has now begun to rattle off movie titles
instead of acknowledging their stellar cast:
“Jaws Opening!” she says.
Mr Nespresso Steps Into a Lift (previously published in Frivolous, by Graham Wood (Pocket Poets 157 – Chapbook, Ginninderra Press, Port Adelaide, 2021)
Graham Wood lives in the northern suburbs of Sydney. His poems have appeared in a range of Australian and international journals and anthologies. Five chapbooks of his poetry were published by Ginninderra Press, Port Adelaide, South Australia over 2021-2022: Picking Up the Sun (Picaro Poets), Frivolous (Pocket Poets 157), Australian Minuscule (Pocket Poets 160), Rattling Cutlery (Pocket Poets 168) and Affinities (Pocket Poets 185). Ginninderra Press also published Graham’s first book- length manuscript of poems called Of Moments and Days in 2023.
CHRIS BRADSHAW
The watching
Dragonflies glint like specks in a goldminer’s pan
transparent wings finding a vein of gilded air.
Do they watch me, the watcher?
Or is their train of thought focussed
on the flight path of an approaching moth
or the Zen aspect of mindfulness?
I have a knowing deeper than proof
gifted from the cenotes of past lives
that something observes my awareness:
monitoring my descent through layers of memory
as I cast about for gold in the slurry;
willing me up through tangled kelp forests
from sunken grottoes of regret.
I breach into the saving light and float
gleaming on the surface
breathing in earth’s exhalation.
Cloud breaks scatter doubt
like wind through a portal.
From the window of space
the something gazes back at me:
the same presence I saw first
in the eyes of my new-born child.
Casting off
The hourglass is running low
and I feel myself growing lighter,
as a dune in a desert storm
sheds what it no longer needs.
It’s not all discarded by design –
some things I let go reluctantly –
but like old stone steps
that are bowed in the middle,
or a tumbling riverbed worn smooth,
I defer to the passing of time.
To avoid the risk of unravelling,
I’m paring myself down stitch by stitch
to become the me that I’m making.
And when at last
I and my all possessions
fit into a small pine boat,
I’ll push out into the calling wind
where a path of celestial candles
will guide me through even-tide
into the open arms of ever-light.
Chris Bradshaw has lived most of her life in Sydney and has worked in journalism, publications and education policy. Her published works include a book of her early poetry, a research work on her family’s post-World War 2 immigration to Australia, several social history programs broadcast on 2SER-FM, and ongoing publication of poems, short stories and children’s stories in digital and print media. Poetry was, and remains, her first love.
CHARLES MURRAY
Don’t you just…
Don’t you just love poems, their power and their jive,
the swing and the zing that sing you’re alive,
when you’re so full of love and hope for tomorrow,
when your joy is exuberant and miles from the sorrow
of yesterday’s sadness, the break-up, the parting
…don’t you just love poems…
Their healing, the smarting of old hurts and brokenness,
the shy and outspokenness, the bathos, the pathos,
the searing estrangements, the trysts and the promises
…don’t you just love poems…
The secret arrangements, the breath of the breathless,
the far and the close, the shy and the dumb struck,
the noisy, verbose…
…don’t you just love poems…
The soul-song of essence, the tell-tale tumescence,
the pulse and its heartbeat, the measure of passion,
overflowing the brim or tormented by ration
…don’t you just love poems…
The milk-white of youth, the soft and the gentle,
the demands of the brute, the obsessive, the mental
…don’t you just love poems…
O send me a poem, let the heart speak your mind,
captivate, rapture me, don’t leave me behind,
don’t leave me behind, oh, don’t leave me behind!
…don’t you just love poems; don’t you just love them…
…don’t you?
Remembering…Leonard
We’ll say a prayer for love tonight remembering his poems;
And laud the crack which allows the light
to enter and soften our rooms;
The rooms where we hide all the pain in our souls,
all the ache of being without,
and we’ll pray for the rhyme which happens in time
to unravel what love’s all about.
Like a bird on the wire we’ll herald the choir,
lamenting his midnight hour,
as he chased love forever with all of his failings
and always came back for more.
We were suckers for his lyrics then and total tragics now,
because they knew and sang our secret selves
when we had broken a sacred vow;
As he kissed a hundred lovers deep when drowning in desire,
for his music smouldered passion and his poetry was fire.
I know you’re on a slow-burn babe and hanging out for love,
and I’ll be here to share our needing until your insistent gentle shove
that tells me to be on my way, to make tracks for the coast
where I’ll be thinking you’re my number one
and how I love you most
until I fall again for love, my senses overcome
by the urging as it surges ‘round my needing and then some;
For I deal the cards to suit myself and begin the game again;
I know you’re on a slow-burn babe still hanging out for love,
no need to ask, I know your pleasure, you won’t ever need to shove…
And we’ll make another poem tonight…for love.
We pray you wings
For all the dreams that died before their time,
the weep that wore the grief of too hard years;
a curtained life closed-out before its prime,
to breathe its last amid despair and tears.
No song have you to sing a jubilation,
no soaring notes to lift a stricken mind
but the lone lament without the consolation
of a memory of joy to leave behind.
We leave you now to the God of our creation,
to the wisdom that the poets dress in verse
and pray you wings to fly past immolation,
to alight to peace in a kinder universe.
Charles Murray has lived on Sydney's Upper North Shore for over 45 years and was an active, invested contributor member of The North Shore Poetry Project during its currency and is a founder member of The North Shore Poetry Collective.
OORMILA V. PRAHLAD
Dirge in June
A lone tree wilts in the solstice night—
a ripple in blue pashmina.
Slow denudation—
its trunk is a withering cross
sowing moth wings
in the night.
All around the periphery of the dark hours
frost-eaten buds decay,
a carpet of papillae
strewn on purl-furrowed soil.
There is no mercy in the frigid sky.
It descends in a shroud of clouds.
Myrrh numbs the pain
of bruised torsos,
tortured limbs
shivering
in winter’s Golgotha.
( First published in Wave 19, iamb—Poetry seen and heard, UK, 2024.)
Padma mudra*
(for my father)
The boy on the marshland is a pious lotus
a helix of petals unsullied
by the murk of mud.
He lies awake at night
in a hammock of moon—
breath sustained by the thin gruel
lining the stalk of his belly.
His fingers moisten cotton wicks.
Oil hisses into blue-eyed flames
as primroses quiver in prayer.
The boy knows that his salvation lies
in the power of the syllable—
he captures cold cursive in chalk on slate,
forging words, forming phrases
raising a bridge over the quagmire,
one kernel of knowledge at a time.
An indigo god smiles,
bamboo flute in hand
glowing from an igneous wall.
They will converse—boy and deity
and alter what seems to be hewn
in stone.
*Padma mudra: A hand gesture in Hinduism and Buddhism that resembles a lotus opening, symbolizing the journey from darkness to light.
( First published in Wave 19, iamb—Poetry seen and heard, UK, 2024.)
Maiasaura*
I know her in her unraveling—
her kaolin scales ground to dust
scattering upon a tongue
of breeze.
There are lessons I learn early on—
that I must grow a pellicle
over my skin
to heal
the penury of touch.
Frenzied murmurations mimic
the shape of her armored heart—
love is a severed appendage
the shadow of a fleeing gecko
a clot of cold blood
throbbing in the dark.
*maisaura: good mother lizard
( First published in Wave 19, iamb—Poetry seen and heard, UK, 2024.)
Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad is an Indian-Australian poet, artist, and improvisational pianist. Her works have been published in Cordite Poetry Review, Bracken Magazine, and the Black Bough Poetry anthologies. She has been longlisted for the Dai Fry Memorial award for Mystical Poetry, nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize, and multiple times for the Sundress Best of the Net Awards. Her debut collection, Patchwork Fugue, was published by Atomic Bohemian Press, UK, in February 2024, and her micro-chapbook A Second Life in Eighty-eight Keys won the Little Black Book Competition in June 2024, and was published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press, UK. She lives and works in Sydney on traditional Gammaragal land. Find her on Instagram: oormila_paintings, and on X: @oormilaprahlad