Tuesday Poem: Three Haiku for Matthew

Brother, the tall kauri,

ancient, heavy heart,

green-shooted with promise.

Across great oceans,

the whale song love

melding our hearts in unison.

You, with a huge heart,

cannot turn your back on

a huge love to fill it.

Tuesday Poem: "Poem on My Father's Birthday"

On the train to Haifa

I think about my father

in wartime Palestine,

a different time, a different name

but the same place.

His memories of oranges and beaches

and warm, Mediterranean swimming

are the times he chose to rescue

from the six years when the world

was drowning in its own blood.

The weather is blue and grey

but the sun shines

like my father’s medals

on his blue-grey air force uniform

that entranced me as a child.

As the helicopter gunships prowl over Mount Carmel,

speeding north to Lebanon,

I wonder what times I will choose to rescue

from a land built out of longing,

but paid for in blood.

POET'S NOTE: It seems sometimes like the Middle East has been constantly in turmoil and this latest event with insurgents declaring an Islamic State in northern Syria and Iraq got me thinking about the 8 months I spent in Israel as an agricultural worker on two Moshavs in 1987 and 1988 and how my father had been there before me as a Flight Lieutenant in the RAF during WWII.

My father died in 1995, aged 83, but I remember him telling me about R'n'R in Beirut, the "Paris of the East" he called it. And he had an album of small black and white pictures taken during the war. I always remember the photo of him floating in the Dead Sea. My Dad loved fruit and he said the oranges in Haifa were the sweetest, juiciest oranges he ever tasted.

As you can see, I wrote this in Israel on my Dad's birthday and posted it to him. Sadly, my Dad died before my two sons were born, but we inherited his wartime medals and my youngest son, Ryan, wears his Grandad's medals proudly at our local Anzac Day commemoration.

My son, Ryan, wearing his Grandad's medals, Anzac Day Memorial 2011

For Mother's Day Sunday 11 May: "On Children and Mothers"

Your fervent hopes that I write

“something about children”

is a mother’s nature revealed.

By their selfless love,

they second their lives to those of their children.

To write of children is to write of mothers.

Five years of life stares down

through coal buttons of mischief and wonders.

Are these groggy, surly people

really in control of the world out there?

The world of five is bound by a desire

for no boundaries,

to be with the big people,

but there are compensations for masks

and early bedtimes: shielded

from the jags and gouges of a world

outside Transformers, morning TV, Bubble-O-Bills,

kindergarten Picassos and a mother’s love.

Six months of life

represents the investment of a lot of breast milk

as he gurgles in his bouncer,

throwing a curve ball smile

through his rusk-besmirched mouth.

His perimeters are smaller than his brother’s,

wind and tears and the succour of the breast

while the faces of giants fill his vision

and huge hands lift him skyward.

And always there is mother,

balancing her day with theirs,

shepherding, nurturing, cajoling them

towards that, over which she has no control:
the future.

Three generations: my mother; myself; my son, Thomas; Christine, Thomas' mother circa 2000

Thomas with his grandmother circa 2001

POET'S NOTE: I wrote this poem many years ago at the behest of a cousin's wife, a woman for whom I have great affection. It is specifically about her and her two children, but, despite whatever changes take place in the world and in society, mothering probably doesn't become any less difficult nor, conversely, any less rewarding. I dedicate this post to Mothers and the wonderful job they do all over this great big world of ours.

Anzac Day Poem: "Eulogy" by Brian Turner

It happens on a Monday, at 11:20 A.M.,

as tower guards eat sandwiches

and seagulls drift by on the Tigris River.

Prisoners tilt their heads to the west

though burlap sacks and duct tape blind them.

The sound reverberates down concertina coils

the way piano wire thrums when given slack.

And it happens like this, on a blue day of sun,

when Private Miller pulls the trigger

to take brass and fire into his mouth:

the sound lifts the birds up off the water,

a mongoose pauses under the orange trees,

and nothing can stop it now, no matter what

blur of motion surrounds him, no matter what voices

crackle over the radio in static confusion,

because if only for this moment the earth is stilled,

and Private Miller has found what low hush there is

down in the eucalyptus shade, there by the river.

PFC B. MILLER (1980-March 22, 2003)

     by Brian Turner

Brian Turner is an American poet.  We, here in Aotearoa/New Zealand, have a prominent poet called Brian Turner too. Our Brian Turner lives down in Otago and didn't see service in Iraq.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Turner_(American_poet)

Brian Turner, the American one, was interviewed on Radio New Zealand National this morning. He read out a poem he'd written that had been inspired by an event that happened when he got back from Iraq. 

Upon returning to the States from service in Iraq, Turner attended a parade which was held at his Brigade's base. The Brigade's Colonel gave a speech at the parade in which he listed all the men who had not made it home from Iraq with the rest of the Brigade. 

Except for one.  Private First Class B. Miller.  

To hear the Podcast from Radio New Zealand National , here is the link:

http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/anzacday

Tuesday Poem: "The Weather"

Outside the window

slivers of daylight

lead us to believe that the weather

has fallen foul of our expectations.

Small boys sidestep school

to savour a rugby ball’s muddy sting.

A fantail dances nimbly

among the watery wattle

like an avian Astaire.

Blackbirds strut the park,

plump gourmets cajoling worms

down their gullets.

Islands of gulls

in brilliant monochrome

against the green, wet green

grass sparkling under grey.

Like psychic stain remover,

the rain urges us to seek a balance

to our sunny day skills.

POET'S NOTE: The above picture is a screen grab from the Waimairie Beach surf cam at sunrise on Sunday just passed. The Easter Bunny came disguised as the last gasp of Cyclone Ita and Easter has been a wet affair this year. Without putting too fine a point on it, Noah would have felt right at home around here this Easter.

Tuesday Poem: "For Thomas on his First Birthday"

Thomas, it’s part of life’s strange design

that these fresh days

of your green bud years

will be lost to your conscious memory.

You enjoy each laugh, each bath, each hug, each kiss,

each new discovery of taste or touch

and then it evaporates into past tense.

Amidst the daily demands of the ordinary,

your mother and I

try to cage that steam.

For two weeks prior to your birthday,

we drive around Canterbury, Otago and Southland

connecting the dots of your mother’s heritage.

The sky is big down here, Thomas,

and the stars burn with diamond clarity

in its grape-dark canvas.

POET'S NOTE: I'm shamefully indulging in a bit of nostalgia here as my oldest son, Thomas, turns 15 in about 11 days time. In the photo above, he's probably closer to two. This was taken in the playground near the Whale Pool on the foreshore of New Brighton Beach.

From the earliest days of his life, he demonstrated that he was an independent-minded spirit, given to blazing his own trail. Hence, not for him the simple task of sliding DOWN slides. No, he liked to climb UP slides even getting in the way of children attempting to slide. Thomas is a lovely boy and I'm very proud to be his father. He is intelligent, creative, forthright in his opinions, fiercely loyal to his friends and family, curious and vastly interested in the world. He likes to delve deeper behind the stories fed to us by the media and, contrary to what is often posited about teenagers, he has a burning interest in current affairs and the geo-political machinations around the globe. He often tells me things I didn't know about the Middle East or the Baltic States or other areas that seem to crop up regularly in world news.

He looks more like this now...not as overwhelmingly cute but still very handsome:

Tuesday Poem: "Not Syria"

Not for us the swift savagery of the strafing jet

or the murderous melée of missiles,

but the slow and steady creep

of ignorance and neglect.

While an empire is being built at speed

in the Central Business District,

the small voices of the poor and vulnerable

cry out unheard by that bureaucratic machine

that knows no face nor gives no kind word.

The third hospitalising bout of pneumonia visits

the 92-year-old widow in the third winter since

Rūamoko rose and shook himself

like a dog emerging from a river.

“I just want my home fixed before I die,” she says.

Not much to ask for,

like peace in Syria.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/christchurch-earthquake-2011/9863017/Alf-92-waits-on-tardy-insurer

PLEASE NOTE: The poet in no way wishes to diminish the enormous tragedy and suffering that is happening in Syria. My heart goes out to the Syrian people who are being slaughtered by a dictator clinging to power at all costs. I pray that peace comes to the Syrian people swiftly and that no more innocent civilians have to die.