#366 - three to end the year -- under house arrest in bush week, my best inventions for the year & a nod to C.J.Dennis

 

31.xii.20

366

three poems (well are they? really?) to end the year

 

under house arrest in bush week

 

a festive treat and funeral for the year

featuring multiple haiku

 

 

the year at home

and the rain now

the rain at home

 

year’s fond farewell

 

creek considers permanent residence

better than the fires

the world smokes a little less this year

 

some more of me

some less of it

the world I mean

 

we’re home!

 

under arrest

in a village of clouds

the rain moved in with us

 

but now and then a breather

 

I wander off into the day 

breeze lightly and thick of

 

hours of the book

lie buried in weather

how lizardly and up

 

jungle it if you will

 

goanna in a tree cling

and shy

snuck around the side

 

other headlines –

 

pumpkin, farmer’s friend

a tangle

and a tussle for the soil

 

in petrichor

we mull the mist

a kookaburra bides

 

then in a begin again

close tribe of trill and fritter

drop in for the moment’s shelter

and call upon here spirits

 

world and home and rain

are one

 

hear trickle

so cicada hush

and come again the one-to-tank

pond-needful

 

you can tell it on the page collecting

 

intricaries of underbliss

the lessons press us here

 

re-set elsewhere

it’s here we mulch the year

 

although the wasp and yes mosquito

very few of the animals wish to attack us

though sometimes trip each other up

that’s from not watching

 

perhaps the Jabberwock?

no one can speak for the JubJub and yet

one finds oneself year end such a song

 

then overhill it

do the dale

home with the cows and come

up to your old roost

quip

 

or take a train of thought

beyond the year

means must have come to the month of Sundays

harvest or blue you decide on a moon

we may never see stars again

 

yet we will imagine sun

 

deeps of a path

and the cats yet unherded

 

fine misted

summer

must watch where you go

 

see the pond to flower

keep the paths by foot

trees of the creek in last light

 

not just me

it’s everyone under house arrest

so suddenly shelter’s not so easily escaped

 

when will we paint the cave still?

 

I looked everywhere for that extra day

some say it was February, could have lost it there

or in the wash with the socks

 

heavy on the roof

know it’s eased

when the cicadas pulse back

 

and which is the more wishful?

 

the rain persisting here

I take off my hat

unzip and join in

 

umbrella tree

approaches the clouds

where else is there to go?

 

tribe of clocks attend

every now and happens then

 

find my own resignedness

of fripperies and follies

 

my resolution?

to take myself off the list

of those who have to achieve

 

words and everything else for fun!

 

maybe then I will come to the story

swim pictures of day

be the poem at last

 

then maybe I’ll get the chance

to actually get a thing done

 

 

my best inventions for the year

were

FLIK-A-BALL

(which is just the top of the box)

the box is called DOWN AND OUT

which is where the balls go BUT

the bigger box it all comes in is called

PING PONG PARLOUR

because there are even more games

and they all involve coloured ping pong balls

stay tuned

this is why we need new years!

 

the other great invention was

SOLAR DOG

goes everywhere collecting

under its own steam if the sun is shining

then comes back to the kennel to roost of a night

and powers up your house car what-have-you

(put the finder through – look it up! invented it months ago)

but I realized that this was an invasive species

(might as well settle for lunar cat [gobbles down fauna]

and of course we’d be better off with indigenous solutions

what was I thinking?) –

hence solar wombat (similar but less flighty),

solar possum (clearly this one’s not nocturnal

but climbs to the top of the tree which is where

the sun will be if there is) and let’s not forget

solar echidna (every spine collecting!)

 

whichever way the solar collector goes it’s a winner

(if they can do it on Mars!)…

and will come in all shapes and sizes

go everywhere the sun goes

and frankly, be a lot of fun

 

 

which is really the whole point about inventing

 

 

of course these things are yet to exist

it’s why I mention them here

 

 

 

 

and last a little nod to C.J. Dennis

 

it’s good to be an island

when the plague has come

and close your ports

and shut up shop

lie feet up in the sun

say ‘world, screw you’

then at nose end

you wave a wicked thumb

 

but I wouldn’t be island

if it wasn’t so much fun

… would you?