#2112 - Launceston random

 

2112

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Launceston random

for Joy , on the day of her joyous cup

a kind of Bloomsday meander

 

here in the roaring forties

not hard to practice my art

 

that’s not knowing where I’m going

 

who can be as wild as this weather?

it’s laid on for all in this place

the quarter hour chimes it

 

at Invermay – on foot a long way

at least I’m avoiding the hundred year flood

 

I don’t expect locals to agree

but it’s winter as far as I’m concerned

 

speck of city and suburb this town

the first with hydroelectric sewerage

a Cornwall transplant, a garrison town

with its gash of gorge, hills rolling

never quite inland enough

 

I go to the Salvos to see if there are Harris Tweeds

no luck

 

‘we preach Christ crucified’ – the Baptists’

ancient lettering

but there must be another kind – think love

and actually it’s all around

 

in smokers’ alley – a gidday

 

there’s Gospel Hall and Vinnies

here and there the odd statue of Jesus

so many signs of spent belief

 

church clutches must once have had the godfearful of here

music in doorways now

impressive, the choice of beer

 

waiting in the barber’s shop

blokes already show their ears

they look to have been pre-shorn
brave souls!

 

there are folk inscribed to show their skin

I think it ill advised in the circs

 

like everyone else here

postie nods to me passing

 

Joy’s advice was just ‘look up!’

 

so doing, I see BILIARD ROOM

from back in the day

so I know that there always was hope

 

and I see the postie’s tin avatar top of the GPO (is it?)

dog chasing and chasing him round in this wind

 

I see how the town peters out in every direction

it’s the wilderness edge a human comes to

this is a kind of success

 

it’s a trick of the wind a place like this

 

there is no place like this 

#2111 - you won't see me picturing (Dove Lake)

 

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you won’t see me picturing

second crack at Dove Lake

from yesterday’s workshop

 

who can read the forest?

who will interpret the rain?

 

thicket in which

magic dry shoes

 

stream is rushing at

it shingles, traps what light

and lets it fall

 

flight appears in its feathers

these are the steps to take me away

 

a throw of fronds and green deep

tangle up out of

and distance!

 

here’s a lake of laid paper

the wall of ice carved stone beside

was and will be water

 

a mountain is always climbing

 

off with our hats and look up 

#2109 - nest

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nest

at Forth

 

so many wonders

one house can be

so much elsewhere in it

 

a ridge lit breezing window out

 

with unknown birds, the road begins

 

here is the play of detail and scale

just at the sun’s first throw

 

so many little landscape escapes

there are many of us here

 

some grim, some determined, one facing away

the quizzic few resigned

 

some in cloth, quite naked

nor is there one unless we light

 

lights caged, a bellows bigger

gourds and hives and time contained

 

creatures are coming out of the walls

there is a horse well ridden

 

so may it please us here

the flowers will arrange   

 

there is a face worn down to a tail

one must leave carefully

 

clouds queue such an horizon as this  

we wait for the world to hatch  

#2109 - Ferndene Gorge

 

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crepuscular, Ferndene Gorge

near Penguin

 

they are grown up among the fallen

in a forest of the rain

 

barkslip, mudrun

everywhere up in gully green

 

stone’s alive and furred to show

a degree of lean in all that rises

 

everything here is grown over with weather

 

little world precipitous

the track has a pyjama bounce

 

a tunnel trompe l’oeill emergence –

my page collecting afterfalls

 

the teastream trickles on

there are giants still stand

 

some reach up through a breath of mist

stairs lead down now into dusk

 

there could be platypus here

who knows?

 

take a next breath

see how it was given

 

I don’t need any blade or cash bonus

I am only by virtue of this

 

unseen creatures sense my presence

and go 

#2108 - Dove Lake Circuit

 

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Dove Lake Circuit

Cradle Mountain

as encountered with we the creatures, too

 

 

day bites

 

at a low tussock puddling, at lettuce moss  

 

snow patching the peaks for far in cloud clearing

 

there’s marshlife trickle

over creekroar

 

mist breath, lichen rise

teastain shallows

 

sky apace, a sunbreak then

sudden bark like a sunset caught in the trunk

 

signal for fresh falls

 

everywhere limb tussle

this rot is life to give

a wrestle and all go down

(death, the brief illusion)

 

under stiff breezing

dell view, log hollow with lakelap

 

like glass cut long since

this bowl given

 

stone incised

for falls now

 

listen!

it’s as if there were an ocean inside

 

ice on the track reminding

ice was, will come again

 

come right round like a clock

 

wind gusting

rain falling all ways at once  

 

a rush on the moss           

hat catching

 

so many countries this one walk!

 

ask who has the time to stop

just to see where they are 

#2107 - among the colours

 

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among the colours

 

here elsewhere to bright

 

a book of teeth – these friends of money

 

see the ant thread of the displaced go

a street unslept

 

paper mountain clockwork

 

sky of all the stars that were

 

a wink and a fold in the night

 

muttering through the wall

blur crowd midst rush

 

field, sea, stone, the stream run on

 

there’s that face can’t help but see

              

it’s for them I find my line

it’s for them we’re here  

#2106 - dishcloth country

 

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dishcloth country

a différend

ekphrastic for Tony Albert’s 2023 ‘Ashtraylia’

 

last patriotic refuge

 

the old digger lungbung

panning for stars

 

come by bayonet, by breeze and diesel

 

and now the charred remains of durry

 

all washed up

and hung out to dry

 

souvenir in the good room

passing this down to the kids