Gazette
No 157, May 2017
Scene
Through bedroom window
What do I see?
Just a roof symmetry
In new suburb
Not a tree - yet...
But maybe
Little blue wren, superb
Against green
Of the newly-mown scene
And above in the deep blue
of the sky
Cumulus and jet trails
Gently lie
And below
Roland, sleeping.
© Kathleen O’Donnell
Heaven
Silken cords running down my back,
Diamonds and pearls flash before my eyes,
Heaven is happening to me right now -
I do love my hot showers!
© June Maureen Hitchcock
Irish-Catholic Betrayal
What did my great uncle Clyde
And other Irish Catholic Australians think
Whilst they lay dying in the trenches
On the battlefields of the Somme
Policed by a bayoneted
Protestant English sergeant
Fighting to save their motherland?
Did my great uncle see his gran’s sad eyes,
Those eyes that had shed tears for a country
That she was forcibly removed from
And transported, shackled to Van Diemen’s
Land,
For having, during the great famine,
Received one piece of corn, forbidden in Ireland?
Did
he remember her cooing and cradling him?
Did he resent those English, righteous
people,
Those who took him from a gin-lactating
mother,
A mother that grew up in orphanages
On derogative remarks towards her
Criminal, corn-recipient, mother?
Did he hear the cries of the wailing corpses
Who pave the streets of Limerick City?
Did he see the small, limp arms outstretched
Next to their skeletal, frozen glazed-eyed
mother?
Did he, as his own life ran out,
Hear the small corpse cease to wail?
Could he smell that which had gone before
Those decaying rat-bitten corpses in
Limerick?
Did
he feel that his death would be punishment
for the betrayal of the Catholic Irish?
Dedicated to his grandmother, Bridget
Foinnerity, (Eliza Maloney)
Irish convict, 7 years for receiving corn
during the great famine, circ. 1848.
Clyde Ford’s mother was Alice
Appleton-Riley-Ford.
© Judy Brumby-Lake
Wynyard Show
The girl with the sun-kissed lips and tousled
hair,
stands, statuesque, at the showground’s
north-west gate,
counting the crowds, charging the modest
entrance fee, ensuring all are welcome to
the annual Wynyard Show.
The burly farmers in their chequered shirts,
their plump bejewelled wives, unruly kids,
and denim tattered-trousered teens, and babes
in
arms, intelligentsia so casually dressed-down.
The mayor, in battered quilty-sweat-soaked
hat,
greets one and all with that ingenuous smile,
he knows the battling families, the farmers’
woes,
their fluctuating fortunes, triumphs and
their trials.
The nostrils prick to fragrant dung and straw
as all encounter cattle, bulls of stupendous
size
exhale with noise and trumpeting ferocity,
as owners burnish cloven hooves and bovine
tails.
A detour to the nursery, the favoured place
where children cradle day-old chicks, stroke
donkey ears, ogle Alpacas, importune for rabbits,
marvel at the downy weightlessness of
ducklings,
or attempt to feed a lamb.
Thence to the equestrian ring, where
jodhpured limbs,
immaculate dark jackets, leather knee-high
boots,
black velvet reinforced crash-hat, white
stock,
proclaim the centuries of subjugation,
or partnership of rider and the rider’s
horse.
This year, a hundred sheep in woolly pride,
the rams stand for the judge’s hand and
practised eye,
and later, winners join the bulls and cows,
with handlers, sometimes little children, in
the grand parade.
The handicrafts pavilion brings the folk
to marvel at the knitted dolls, embroidered
quilts,
pneumatic sponge-cakes, lamingtons, banana
bread
and decorated gumboots, longest carrot,
quintessential spud.
Pumpkins disappoint, this year of puny size,
the cultivars of gardeners too ignorant, or
too proud
to use the secret formulae of former years,
and so subversively achieve gigantic but
inedible
success.
Thence to the bird pavilion and cacophony of
chooks, Black Australorp and Leghorn, Plymouth Rock,
and snowy Silkie, powder-puff upon its head,
and Cochin with white feathers on its feet,
and Isa Brown, a most prolific layer,
the hens reward you with three hundred eggs a
year and Hamburg, sometimes striking silver-spangled,
and Ancona, Pekin, Orpington and gold
Campine.
And very soon, the axemen’s woodchips fly,
as muscled men in singlets wield the shining
steel
of favoured axe, or one or two-hand saws,
to tame the unforgiving eucalypt of
standing-block,
or underhand, between the legs, or insert
boards
in spirals up a tree-trunk, thus to
demonstrate
the age-old skill of foresters who cleared
the land
for farming, with their forebears’ fortitude.
Immediately behind the axemen’s fence
lie the remains of Wynyard’s pioneers;
the graveyard stones record their lives and
deaths,
Quiggin and Moore, who ran the earliest mill
beside Camp Creek, Fenton up on the Cape,
and King who chased the Tommeginer off his
farm,
and Richard Gutteridge, Peart and Bugg and
Bock,
Dallas and Sams, Abell and Holmes, and
Patterson and Bauld.
The day wears on and melancholy cows,
their udders unrelieved since morning’s milk,
moo mournfully and low, whilst their
exhibitors,
exhausted, hunker down beside their beasts,
and talk of their success, their accolades,
their shiny purple ribands and rosettes
which soon will garnish walls of spidered
sheds.
“Come off ’er, mate, y’re much too young fer
that!”
as a young Ayrshire bull attempts to copulate
with a recumbent Hereford brown cow in
the
adjacent pen,
her brown eyes pools of passive acquiescence.
The crowds disperse with fluffy ducks and
fairy floss, their pockets emptied of the cash for jumping castles, slippery
slides, and gravity-defying rides,
and shooting galleries, dips and dodgem cars.
Ignoring piles of the still-steamy dung and
straw
adhering to their boots and shoes and
stroller wheels, and once so-polished hooves, and hocks and fetlocks, they
acknowledge champions and farewell friends, and satisfied, the families head
for home,
and tell the sun-kissed girl with tousled
hair
still at the gate,
they
were so gratified that they had come.
©
Mary Kille March 2017
Michael Garrad
On One Side - Part 2
Did you see me leave?
Yes. You looked better.
I was. I am. You needed to know.
Was I dreaming?
You saw what you believed.
I believed it was you saying goodbye.
Then you saw me. No one else would.
No. Just you and me.
Yes.
I found you that awful day.
Yes.
No one else called.
I’m glad it was you. Did you call an
ambulance?
Yes. It was a houseful later.
Did they cry?
Yes, a bit. I cried a waterfall of tears.
Yes.
You were so cold - and alone, and cold. Should have been there with you.
You never did get your weekly TV guide. Or lunch.
You kept me company.
I kissed you and held your hand. Said I loved you.
As you did every day.
I do love you.
Yes. What would I have done without you?
What will I do without you?
You will survive.
It’s such a struggle. Wish you were still here but not sick anymore.
It was time. It was just everything.
If I could reach across death I would.
You still have life to live.
No more visits to 32.
You still visit me now.
Yes. I know you had to go.
Yes.
No more endless days.
No.
No more weary routine.
No.
No more pain and anguish.
Not now. And you?
Listless, in limbo. You were my life, my hope, my inspiration. Every
day, morning till night.
Yes.
You still are.
Yes.
Hooray for Barbara! That’s what I say! Where would we be without her?
Where would I be without her? It would be the end for me.
You made me smile when you said hooray.
It was tough for you to smile.
Yes.
I need you to be there. Will you be there?
Yes.
Know I should let you rest.
I’m resting now. TV on. Book to read. Fruit bowl next to
my bed. Orange juice. Incense burning. Can you smell it?
Yes.
Michael Garrad
What Is In A Name?
Philip, Phil
Fiddle, Tipple
The Sarsaparilla kid, The Plodder.
Lucky Odd Eyes, Always Happy
Pommy Phil, Pommy
Bastard.
Man Of Peace, The Survivor
White Trash, Brother
Phil.
Abacus, Bean
Counter.
Phil The
Pom In Exile.
The Fly In, FIFO.
These are all names that have been ‘penned’
to me, at some time in life.
Some recall happy occasions, some of strife.
Life is not always the same
And there is an awful lot in a name.
© Phil Harper
Sonnet
I much prefer the summer’s warm caress
Yet feel the winter’s echoes in my mind,
Annoying, chilly drafts that cause distress
There, hidden pain that no one else can find.
For this allows all dreams to live
But always stalls the effort when I try
For then as now where stress should find
relief
In pleasant meadows by the stream and sky.
Few men of pain are sadder than they seem
And see the future in a life abused,
When meditation turns into a dream
To trust in light that never was confused.
I
then may open to myself a door
Where many rest and dream inside their core.
© Joe Lake
K Market
I cannot bear new clothes.
I can smell the little Asian fingers all over
them
Threads pulled loose, unravelling
As would the machinist’s mind
Toiling and boiling
Making clothes on a production line
For Western countries who quench their thirst
As though it were an eternal reservoir
Of black sweat.
I will always go to an opportunity shop
And step into another woman’s world
Wear her discarded designer clothes.
Sometimes I don’t wash them for a while
So sweet is charity’s perfume
The most sought-after garment,
is one that is Australian made
Beautifully stitched and crafted.
These I dare not wear.
They are to be donated to a museum
So that future generations will gaze in
wonder
Over craftsmanship superb
And mourn a culture lost,
All at the price of cheap labour and cloth.
© Loretta Gaul
A short-short story by Joe Lake
The Contest
The problem with Max was that she had a dream
to be a pop star. A further problem was that she had taught herself guitar from
a book in the library. The instrument was a present from her aunt George, whose
name was really Georgina, not like Max, who was supposed to have been a boy.
Max was born with a weak heart. She was skinny for her ten years. She had a
heart-shaped face and sparkling blue eyes that were enlarged by her glasses
that sat precariously on her button nose. She had a botox clown mouth, only
there never was any botox. To an observer, she looked like a wind-up doll. Her
mouth, when smiling, looked as if it were a thing in itself, a hypnotic
fixation to the viewer whose attention was re-directed when she projected the
bell-like voice of an angel.
She
had entered this singing contest run by a major TV studio a number of times.
Each time something had gone wrong and she wasn’t allowed to perform. Max’s
aunt never wanted her to enter as she believed that entertainment was the work
of the devil. At one time her guitar string broke, at another she had stumbled
and fallen at the audition. Eventually, aunt George, who had taken her to the
big city for the contests, suggested she should sing Costa Diva from Norma.
Aunt George had said that Melba had told other singers who came to Australia to
perform, ‘Sing ’em muck’. She should, nevertheless, aim high so as not to be
ashamed and if failing this time, she at least had given her best. Aunt George
wanted Max to fail.
And
now there she was before this huge animal that was a crowd, daring her to
control them for a few moments, or else be condemned to ignominy..
The
orchestra was supportive during rehearsal although Max had held back so as not
to antagonise anyone. The arrangement featured a supporting instrument, an alto
saxophone that introduced the music and would give her the cue through the plug
in her ear that connected Max with the producer.
She
began to sing, gently at first, then rising and falling with the melody. The
audience was hushed
expectantly. After Max had sung the first
refrain, the saxophone literally sang in the higher register and when Max
joined the melody as she sang in Italian, the music rose and rose to a pitch as
if walking up a staircase.
‘Don’t
even try it,’ the director had said behind her back. He thought of her as a
second banana bolster to the real pop singers who were expected to win and sell
lots of CDs for the show.
Max
was excelling now and as the music reached its climatic pitch, she closed her
eyes and with the support of the saxophone that lifted her, there was such a
fever pitch of intensity that, on the final note, the audience jumped to its
feet, howling with appreciation.
Max
held her stance for a little while, raised her arms in the air and then
collapsed in a heap.
End 157
