Breathing Just a Little

It's Saturday morning in the suburbs, and late autumn has sidled in all dove grey skies and chilly exhales sugar frost on the grass the leaves still falling, but the gold dulling now the citrus trees have given their last fruit, and are quiescient, drawn inside themselves from the once-were-flowers, seeds drip down darkening into the damp silty earth wodsmoke drifts out from chimneys down the street, curling away to the horizon in fat scribbled interrobangs saying the year is turning from the light why why why and from the house next door, the smell of frying bacon while the people behind are making some kind of stew, rich with the tang of wine and meat the kids from the corner are riding their bikes up and down, and calling out something about dragons while the people next door trudge off with their twin cavoodles, one dragging them along, one needing to be dragged on the nature strip, at least four kinds of mushrooms growing in fairy rings and ley lines and I remember the autumn ...

is there anything more boring than a poem about a strange dream where the house is sold but you forgot, and you haven't  started packing, but you must get out next Tuesday also the house is not actually your real house it's a trick mirror version, all weird angles and hidden rooms decaying walls, brick dust and everyone still here, even those who moved out no one gone and you can't find or can't remember  where all the paperwork is at and no one wants to help pack and when you try Googling "packing services" Google just gives endless hits of sad poems

One of our Month of Poetry challenges in January was to write a contrapuntal poem, something I had never done before. Contrapuntal poetry involves interweaving or combining two or more poems to create a new poem. It uses two or more poems that are distinct in tone and subject matter but are, in some way, in conversation with each other. The term “contrapuntal poem” gets its name from contrapuntal music, which features more than one melody playing simultaneously. This is my effort. It can either be read as two separate poems down each side (Cat's Poem and Bird's Poem), or as one poem about both animals. I don't think I mixed the tone up enough for this to be a really good exemplar, but it's my first one, maybe I'll get better with more practice. It was literally inspired by watching my little cat staring out the window at the crested pigeons, who staring back at her, both giving out little peeps every now and then.

across the world bombs are falling fire is raining down in Persia, and who knows what ends will come of it the plain truth, now: no one ever knows or can know where war will lead, to what destruction to what crush of empires and of women and men  stories swallowed whole in the sunlight, only the bones spat out to grow dry in the unshielded sun falling into dark like the Incas did, and also the Picts like the Etruscans when Rome rose bloody and teeming like the Hittites, and the Phillistines like the great city of Carthage, tamped out as a candle flame razed and sown in salt  and here is our age: sliding towards disaster, run by billionaires and idiots and, here, tucked up against the tailbone of the earth fretting against civility, is a country that does not seem to know its fortune so far from bombs and battle and, still, fractious, chafing, and the sky looks heavy, today grey and gloom-soaked, with rain in its face and, here, the pigeons croon to the burdened light still, an...

My secondborn daughter moved out of home to a rental flat yesterday - the first of my chicks to leave the nest. I have so many feelings about this, and, as always, poetry is my access point to emotion and reflection. This poem is an English Madrigal. Moving Day When you were small (which feels like yesterday) you used to curl against me as I read your green eyes soft with wonders in your head. The movers came and took your things away your room left blank, with just your bare-stripped bed. Once all we five lived here, til yesterday; now the page turns, to stories yet unread. The days will pass, and we will find our way and learn how, at remove, to hold the thread to draw from what's behind for what's ahead. Forever lit with stars, our yesterday: the greatest story my life ever read the lines in which I read the true godhead.

Every year in my January Month of Poetry exercise, the group is set a challenge one day of the week to write to a prompt. One of this year's challenges was to take lines from a favourite poem and build a new poem from them. I used the closing lines of Mary Oliver's On Travelling to Beautiful Places to create this one. On Being Alive as the Apocalypse Begins  and in truth the only ship there is is the ship we are all on burning the world as we go this ship that we can't get off, now maybe once we could have we could have dived off the deck, slick with salt and hard dreams cutting through the white horses of the glimmering sea to take our chances with the seals and the sharks turning our faces to the distant shore maybe once we could have turned this ship around or, if not that, we could have put the matches back in the box chosen sunsets and fruit and song and touch over the savage pleasures of power over watching the world on fire and delighting in our spite or even just ou...

in the early mornings when the light is pale the day as fresh as a new-laid egg the pigeons on the garden wall cooing steadily the cat snuggled up under my ribs you curl against my back, and sigh the warmth of you easing all my soreness this posture as ancient as our days or as any days - here are two and also, one here is a helix wrapped in on itself here is a story that does not end here is a fist slammed against the night.

Every year, I participate in a month of poetry challenge where the goal is (you guessed it) to write one poem every day. A solid 70% of them are not worth reposting, but occasionally there is one that I don't mind airing a little further. The origins of this poem are a bit of a twisty story, but all the inspiration is from art, not my own life (art has proved a richer vein, given how peaceful and uneventful my life has been, excepting the death of my dog, for the last little while).  I am currently doing a re-read project with my Agatha Christie collection, and just finished reading the Poirot novel Five Little Pigs, which I have always thought is a top-tier Christie. While reading it, I was listening to Taylor Swift's Folklore album (I am not a Swiftie, but that specific album I do really like and have listened to many times over the years). Just as I reached the denouement of the novel, the album hit the song Mad Woman, and the two things fused irrevocably in my head ... and ...

I thought I'd have a bit of a stab at a found poem sestina, which is a device I have used before. I create the first stanza from a line from one of today's news articles (I try to look across a variety of outlets), then build the poem from that base. The sestina is a weird form, anchored by the final words of each line of the opening stanza. The pattern is: 1. ABCDEF 2. FAEBDC 3. CFDABE 4. ECBFAD 5. DEACFB 6. BDFECA 7. (envoi) ECA or ACE In this pattern, A is the final word of line 1, B is the final word of line 2, and so on. Source articles: 1. Quote from President Trump in The Guardian live feed 2. Artificial intelligence to dominate Australia's future economy, but who will reap the benefits? by David Taylor (ABC Australia News) 3. Brett Sutton quoted in "'We never want to do that again': Brett Sutton on the lessons that must be learned from the pandemic by Neil Mitchell, Nine News 4. France transfixed by murder trial without a body by Hugh Schofield, BBC New...

It is strange, the day when you wake up in a pool of sunlight, your limbs loose in their post-dreaming lethargy and you realise that you can release the pain at last; that you can reach out your hand to the one who hurt you and say, we can go on, and I no longer hold that deep black well inside me dark and sad and full of knives. Perhaps, after all, forgiveness is more like love than it is like forgetting. It comes up softly and after many long nights cradling hurt places tenderly spinning gold from bitter straw. Perhaps it is the lovegift that you give your poor, sad, wounded past self to say: I see that pain, and I let it go and I do not hold the darkness anymore and I can hold out my hand again in kindness even to the one who hurt me and I can cherish the new flowers that grow on the grave of the person I was, before: the new life that comes from old things dying the things I learned from those hard dark watches the things the moon taught me, when it was just her and me sailing the ...

(This is a weird form poem, almost but not quite a prose poem, inspired by the ground-breaking theoretical work being done by my close friend Emily, who is a rising star in the literary and cultural theory world and who I am enormously proud of). On the menopause of whales  did you know, she said, that some whales go through the menopause too? orcas and so on, the ones with teeth. only humans and toothed whales and chimps, that's all, and I said no, no I didn't know that, I didn't know that any other species stuttered and faltered and plunged into the twilight the way we do the way I am doing with a body that tries and tries to bleed every month but only sometimes, only fewer times than sometimes, succeeds with a mind and a heart and many sets of pyjamas drenched with a misery that has no name and has many names  my daughter says they learned in biology that menopause is a rare and strange evolution, counter-intuitive and seemingly aberrant, because breeding from first matu...

it's Sunday morning in July; the sky powder-pale and clear trickling around the edges of the still-drawn blinds with blue-ice fingers  and no one is awake but me, and possibly the old dog, snuffling blearily around in his garden the dawn-screeching cat has returned to the heater's embrace and wheezing slumber, and all the people are still lost in snores and dreams and my belly still stabbed me when I got up to fetch tea, but a little less sharply than yesterday, a little less miserably, as I hunched my old-woman crawl through the cold half-lit house watching the sparrows chitter and pick at seeds on the winter grass as the kettle sang its morning song a flinty smell of cold leaves and dew-soaked concrete in the air and tomorrow my daughter will leave before the light to go to another country she will end her day in hot bright streets, while we, left here, shiver and draw our blankets tighter travelling with people she has loved a long time, in memory of those who, lost, are no ...

So the whole "a poem every day" idea hasn't really happened, but I am still enjoying doing these when I can. It looks like I will end up with at least 15 poems for the month if the current pace is maintained, which is pretty good! Today is another pair of poems to represent days 17-23, on two similar-ish mysteries of contemporary history that have fascinated not just me but many professional and amateur sleuths over the years. One of them is much better known than the other, which is in itself somewhat interesting. These are the cases of Alfred Loewenstein and DB (Dan) Cooper. Alfred Loewenstein (11 March 1877 – 4 July 1928) was a Belgian businessman. At his peak in the 1920s, Loewenstein was worth around £12 million in the currency of the time (equivalent to £913.25 million in 2023), making him the third-richest person in the world at the time.  On the evening of 4 July 1928, Loewenstein left from Croydon Airport to fly to Brussels on his private aircraft along with six ...

Well, as expected, I did not have time for poetry on my long weekend away in the Yarra Valley (which was awesome - a couple of photos provided for evidence!) Today, I used my work lunchbreak to compose two poems that together represent 5 days.  The first poem for today is based on the mystery of the Mary Celeste . The Mary Celeste was a Canadian-built, American-registered merchant brigantine ship that was discovered adrift and deserted in the Atlantic Ocean off the Azores on December 4, 1872. She was discovered in a haphazard but seaworthy condition under partial sail and with her lifeboat missing (the assumption has always been that the people left on the lifeboat). The last entry in her log was dated ten days earlier. She had left New York City for Genoa on November 7 and was still amply provisioned when found. Her cargo of alcohol was intact, and the captain's and crew's personal belongings were undisturbed. None of those who had been on board were ever seen or heard from ag...

Today's historical mystery poem is about the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. The Ten Lost Tribes of Israel refers to the people removed from the then-Kingdom of Israel after it was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire around 720 BCE. The tribes were: Reuben, Simeon, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Manasseh, and Ephraim. Israel had earlier split into two kingdoms, Israel and Judah (which comprised the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin).  Side note on Judah: it survived until the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem in 587 BCE, and was later re-formed as an autonomous Persian protectorate when Judean exiles returned after the fall of Babylon about 50 years later. Judah became the area known as Judea in Roman times, until the expulsion of the majority if its Semitic population in two waves in 70CE and 135CE. Modern Jewish people are named after Judah, and primarily gain their descent from these people. Back to the ten tribes - the historians' assumption has always been that the c...

Today in mysteries of history poems: the Tunguska event. The Tunguska event was a massive aerial explosion that occurred around 7am on 30 June 1908 over a region in western Siberia, Russia. The explosion registered on instruments worldwide and led to noticeable atmospheric effects for months afterward, as well as levelling trees and burning land over a wide area.  The closest observers were some reindeer herders asleep in their tents in several camps about 30 km  from the site. They were blown into the air and knocked unconscious; one man blown into a tree later died. The scientific consensus is that the Tunguska event was likely caused by a fragment of a meteorite, but there is no conclusive evidence to validate this as no fragments have been found. Some scientists suggest that the cause may instead have been the explosion of a large natural gas reservoir underground, that had been experiencing leaks and that would have blown up due to ignition sources as lightning. Alternati...

This first mysteries of history poem is inspired by the so-called "dancing plagues" that occurred in Europe across the 14th to 17th centuries. It involved hundreds, or even thousands, of people dancing erratically but continuously for long periods of time for no apparent reason, without music (although sometimes music was added in as an attempt to treat the issue), with some or many of them dying from the exertion. While there are many theories about what caused it (the most popular are ergot poisoning from mushrooms and some kind of mass nocebo / mass hysteria effect), no one knows for certain, and it seems likely that we never will. That certainly doesn't stop me from speculating, though :-) Dance if one day you step outside your door and the air     doesn't seem like it did yesterday, and your neighbour          isn't beating out her rugs like she does every day but instead is staring, her eyes fixed,            ...

  The mornings of ice have roared in suddenly now. The breath of autumn turning from summer memory to winter herald in the space of a few short days. No time to acclimate, if that were even possible; the long warmth vanished into the pale clear sky. Woodsmoke rises and mushrooms creep across the grass and getting out of bed has become a matter of will rather than instinct. The first morning tasks once again to set the rice pot cooking  and put on both the heaters, while my toes curl imploringly inside the not-enough slippers. Rousing cat and dog for their morning medications is a difficulty, as they wind their bodies into helixes, bolstering against the chill. Today is a day for thermal vests and lambs-wool socks; for heatpacks and finger gloves, scarves and puffer jackets. A little later, the warm rice and fresh egg, the hot tea, provides a moment of comfort before the run to the station for my daughter's workday, shivering from door to door let's take the big car today , I s...

The Change so I want to talk about the way the seasons are changing: how the days are shaking off the peach fuzz and gold lace, the last of the late roses and the warmth of the midday sun. reaching for the sharp edges of hospital white stars in an endless black sky the dubious steel and blue-tinted cream of cloudy rain-bearing afternoons. The nights are getting longer and the air turning colder  nights spent with covers fully drawn and the small electric radiator on low the cat adhered to my ribcage, humming and velveteen hiding from the world. The aching flame of autumn is almost out now, in the garden and the sky and also in my body: my body, that has followed the rhythms of the month as steadily as a heartbeat since I was eleven years old; every month except when full of child cursing and blessing me with blood and with the relief from blood the pain and the mess and the way my heart lightens every time, is renewed and made whole my fears and my failures subsiding with the bleed...

I gave myself a day off paid work today to get caught up on life stuff.  I did the morning drop-off run. I went to the doctor, the pharmacy, and the optometrist. I did a big grocery shop and the meal planning for the next 10 days. I cleaned the kitchen properly, and watered and weeded my courtyard plants. I did the autumn quilt wash of my big Amish quilt (I wash it twice a year, in spring and autumn). I did my 30-minute weights and stretches routine that my trainer devised for me, and I took the dog for a walk. I paid bills and scheduled a bunch of appointments and meetings. I made a big batch of vegetable soup to take out to my parents. (And yes, I sat down with lunch and a book for an hour too!)  It was a life-productive day, and I think I will return to the work tomorrow refreshed for taking it. It's one of the great benefits, for me, of being a freelancer, and thus my own boss - when there are no pressing client deadlines (and there was only one of those this week, on Wedn...