birthday promise

birthday promise

Fire-walking, cloud-walking, sea-walking dream…

I.
a wilderness
of rose
catches
the nor’westerly
over the
arch.
wire
shrivelled
amongst root.
thorn
hardens against
the summer,
evermindful
the cold.

II.
clouds beached
upon
the
evening.
you camp amidst
the dull surround
of dream –
cloud-walking,
fire-walking,
wavelets muffled
beneath your toes
sea-walking
dream: petal
of your heart’s
wild gravity.
divine the
dawn afresh.
a remnant moon
bleached coral
above the west.

aquarelle

aquarelle

The wind’s violin danced me on and upwards…

hereabouts
it began,
the coming to
whatever was around
me, the step in of sun
through glass,
the scrawled
stick-voices of birds
in the hedge,
and scratchings of their
feet on iron roof,
the tastes bright as
formica, the touches
on leaves, a nose
into flowers,
and later,
whichever way
to school you took
a steep run uphill,
the wind’s violin
at your back dancing

trenched in

trenched in
   to my grandfather, William ‘Pop’ Rumble

Soldiers of an Australian artillery brigade passing through Chateau Wood, 29 October 1917. From the Australian War Memorial collection

you went to
‘the war’,
you came back.
there were i
heard from mum
just once
places in your
mind you never
trod in day
though nights
might wake in them
caught in mud
the screaming of
men and shell.
the least said
you would have
lesser, so the less
she told us.
you kept the
war from us,
a good soldier
to the core,