Namatjira’s
Flowers
sun neon white
yellow green
orange
red blue
purple
pink your heartland
colours laid
out
in ceremony
their genius
glossy
on Floriade’s
back
inside I do not
find you
bedded and
tamed for festival
fringe-dwellers,
their landscapes
blind despite
your borrowed
luminescence
for their
consumer
culture covers
and in the
presence
of flowers I do
not know
if I should
grieve
the ignorance
and absence
or celebrate
your freedom
©2025. Jennifer
Kemarre Martiniello
Sunday Morning
Gumbaynggirr Country 26 Jan, 2025
The dawn chorus ended, a King Parrot (green,
female) whistles round the garden, sound
and vision shape identity. Benevolent quiet,
no church, no bells. Not a whisper from
the Pacific Highway. The village sleeps,
too early for growling garden mechanicals.
I squeeze the last of the oranges, we stand
on deck and relish familiar entanglements,
the forest is wild but refuses wilderness.
I look down, fur is nibbling our deconsecrated
vegetable garden - fetch my camera. Dürer’s hare
had ignored voices but at the faintest click
of a shutter, radar ears halt eating, eyes look up.
Does it sound like a gun being cocked?
The art of inter-species relations is on hold.
Small paintings with words
boat cuts a crab’s claw slash
pale sea, scumbled on the horizon
land, a taloned finger pointing into
white blur
the sea’s lips open, close
smooth patch on the swell
schooling fish!
fins serrate the foaming crests
boiling, leaping
a shark’s below
wind—
macroscopic force, molecular motion
billions of molecules flowing in concert
waves on great atmospheric rivers
relentless north-westerly
begins at dawn with the eye of the sun
keening, a wire, shrieking
clouds—
gale snaps at their tails
cumulus growing horns
a dark contemplative face
my face perhaps, peering through a microscope
skeleton of fish, a humpback whale
shark’s notched maw, moon sized eye
a querulous lapwing calls her mate
devoted to a crazily situated nest
all life, driven to send itself forward
outrace entropy
sitting on, despite the gale
trees lashing, thrashing,
the bird’s black cap is resolute
the sea at night
my father
grey flannel trousers, soft shirt
scent of tobacco, seaweed, petrol
out in the fishing boat, Prussian blue waters
drowned, lost at sea? yet
wooden boxes, silver pike
under a bare yellow bulb
a flounder in the water, a lighted spear
green with a sodium glow
kelp like wetsuits discarded by divers
bearing tridents, foam on their beards
my mother departs, outgoing tide
see her black hair from behind
I’m waiting for a different current
in the doldrums, becalmed, around and around
the channel
jagged, blasted, rough
pushy demonstrative wind
plasters its fingers, combs back the waves
a clawing flourish
yacht at the wharf, mast snapped
carbon fibre, what wind
can do such a thing
rain—
glass beads, sharp edged
hammer the sea grey green
the gull’s breast, white as foam
battling waves
someone in grief
pounds a table, over and over
the jetty at night, lamp-black water
waves lick pylons
proton pump, luciferin, flash!
dinoflagellates, ostracods
diatoms sliding in glass canoes
noctilucent, luminescent
pinpricks in a sea-sky
cold stars blinking
a fish, uranium green
flicks past, meteor trail, shooting star
flash, flash, a starfish is a disembodied head
walking the sea floor on its lips
science says
orange harvest moon
gilding the waves, scraping fish-scales
golden disc pressed transiently on sand
bluebottle’s sail inflated, twisting
sailors run aground, Velella velella
mercurial liquid, lick in, lick out
glissando
clatter of trailers, bearing big boats
sharp white prows, snouts of sharks
remember the quietude
when all was vast
so many boats shrink the lake,
sliced into slabs
only the wetland is dreaming
dark shape, swiftly shooting
snips the water’s silver skin
kelp coloured, peering through seaweed
intelligent, scheming, brains in its arms
octopus
shhhhh, be quiet
pink shell wavers in the mirror
stars in the background, planets and dust
where’s the horizon? how far, how long?
cyborgs thinking
ten thousand times faster than we
who are as plants, but lesser—
these days, everything’s a portent
deep time
sculpted boulders
holes, rills, keyholes
once a riverbed, Devonian,
crinoids cased in lava on that one Permian day
how did we get here?
wet kelp, rattles of stones and shells
the sea’s lips open, close
Virginia Shepherd is a beachcombing biologist who writes science fiction. Over many years she has researched cell communication, bioelectricity and plant intelligence. She lives between the mountains (Darug country) and the sea (Yuin country) where she continues to explore the world inside this one.
WHITE PETALS
1.
A storm of white flowers sunwarm centres
waits silently for a bride white as leadlight
windows arching on an overcast afternoon
Filigree-patterned borders stained
green as the grass slopes below
yellow as stamens and tomorrows
white petals fingering white lace
2.
Poets spread themselves on lawns
under umbrellas red and magenta
Read from paper sheets petalwhite
Behind them
snowtrails of climbing roses
engulf old stone
and a woman
in white dress glides silently
I walk to the other window stand close
Heavy black leading makes small frames
of large scenes as the woman in white
reappears near picnic blankets
and folding chairs
looks furtive illusory
Now there is nothing but poetsong
and three white blossoms in trees
growing past a slate grey roofscape
Details to take away
the expansive straw hat she wore
The books she carried close to her breast
3.
In the pond next to the chapel
water lilies pinkfinger the air
Underneath they are white as new flesh
the water’s surface still as ice
latticed with shadowpoles
Here the women are black silhouettes
nymphs sliding among reeds
invisible to the naked eye
They play to the camera
carry their poems in their heads
and durry bags
Inside is a long gallery of cellos
listing necks blanched shoulders
swan wings feathered words
falling petals
— from Stop Your Cryin (Island Press)
Lizz has published fifteen books. Her tenth poetry title Bitumen Psalms was recently released by Flying Islands Pocket Poets. The Wear of my Face (Spinifex Press, 2021) won the ACT Notable Award for Poetry (Big Press) 2021. Born in Belfast, Lizz has lived in Binalong, rural NSW for a long time.
LILAC BUSH
Vincent van Gogh
Saint Remy, 1889
Lilacs pungent
as memory
rob me of sky
block my view
of irises, yellow
broom
and the narrow
path
that leads the
way out.
At my feet, the
day lies stunted
as a daisy —its
flower head
white. My senses
stung by invisible
bees.
Impossible to
penetrate
memory
find
its perfect hive.
Note: Van Gogh painted the view
of the lilac bush from the window of his room at the asylum of St Paul de
Mausole in Saint Remy
.
Moya Pacey
Moya Pacey’s third collection, Doggerland (Recent Work Press 2020) was highly commended in
2021 ACT Book of the Year Awards. She is a founding editor of the women’s on-line journal Not Very
Quiet and in 2019, received a Canberra Critics Circle Award, with Sandra Renew, for her influential
work on women’s poetry.
Japonica
a quick mist
from heart to eyes—
japonica
my childhood evoked
in carmine blossoms
the effort
to steal a sprig receives
torn fingers
the way I’m feeling now—
a little broken
our mother
with sparkling crystal vase
and flower frog
her soul hidden
in each arrangement
the fragrance
of her old-time garden—
delicate
as if distilled into
an Eau de Parfum bottle
her legacy
blooms in my senses
late in life
I cannot grow plants
but I can plant a poem
so I pen
a floral tribute
to my mother
for tending the springtime
of my existence
Ikebana
that never ending quest
for perfection
the words and petals
that fill our memories
No
mist here
Right
now, I’m after some shade.
The
birch leaves are already falling, spindling
themselves
in the too-warm air, scragging
themselves
on the still-green lawn, exhausted.
A smattering of yellow-hammer dahlias succour
bees, even as they wilt in thirty-two degrees
of belated summer. I find a lichen-blistered bench
shadowed
by upright English oaks doggedly
deepening
their green. A hint of breeze weaves
their
lobate leaves, initiates foliar conversations.
Tweety
birds dash themselves
against
the air above the wires.
All
else is silence.
The
cabbage gums stand, smile back
to
the sun even as they lay shade
over
this unseasonable heat,
even
as beauty burns away.
Penny
Wilson
Roots
I guess.
For
the house at the top of the street at the top of the hill, my usually
cautious father purchased — dynamite. Until then, a spruce planted upon
my birth and known as my twin was the sole occupant of our rock yard
.This twin grew but bruised and tired due not only to its
symbolic status as 'The Garden' but also due to its use as cricket stumps
and goalpost.
Post
dynamite however, with The Rock shattered and buried beneath oh so
many loads of topsoil , things changed. Agapanthus freely multiplied as
did poplar trees, hydrangeas, jonquils, fishbone fern and azaleas. Our
weathered and faded fence encompassed a small gate which opened onto a world
where chooks roosting in a rusting Ford were now supplying much needed
fertiliser. Why did I think of this Garden instead of my own lush oasis in the
middle of the usual neighbourhood colorbond congregation? Roots, I
guess.
And
where should I buy more dynamite?
Bio
My
growing years were near Manly NSW often immersed in its waves and
pools . Later, as a teacher I loved having my days filled
with art, music and drama. I have exhibited with the
Newcastle Printmakers Workshop for many years mostly enjoying aluminium
etching, collagraphs, drawing for solar plate and creating artist books. In
this collagraph and etching I was thinking of our garden evolving organically after
such an aggressive seeding .
Penny
Wilson
Couple
of nylon rakes, a straw broom
You would not call us gardeners, and
this is not a garden but a tan parterre,
an eighty-metre length of granite sand
with eight grand planes, left to spread for years,
trees, you might say, from another realm,
stretching to my window on the sixth.
Bruce is 79 and I just caught him up,
and Warren is well into his magic eighties,
which we all agree entitles him to lead.
(Sometimes you drive two hundred miles and
the fuel gauge does not think of budging—
you must be powered by a magic drop of fuel,
that lasts for ever, or seems to, while it lasts.)
We rake and Warren sweeps the
pavement.
Passing neighbours are reminded of Japan,
but Bruce and I think ourselves to Paris
where we make the Tuileries look smart
and smoke imaginary Gauloises.
I think of Jackson Pollock as we work,
how he left the fall of paint to chance.
Our rake strokes, directed only by the task,
gathering leaves and twigs and bark,
create an unpremeditated patterning,
tight grooves in many overlapped directions,
pleasing to both raker and beholder.
The thought could trick you to try for beauty,
so, I say nothing of the thought to Bruce.
Also, I think of Evan Jones's poem
of raking in the early Canberra winter,
the pile of leaves, 'a slow moist fire',
emblem of the garden's and the poet's past.
Not gardening, but cultivating
something,
a kempt look, tended, a parchment erased
to be re-writ by prams, removalists and bikes,
who begin before we have properly ended.
Soon leaves in millions will let
themselves go,
our green waste bags will plump with dead.
Endless cycle. We do not talk of endings.
hic et nunc
where I’ve not been before
Gore Cove Track Series
I remember it all just as if it were now
the trail of trees
their up and their down
reaching for weather
a cave high up carved from the storm
there’s a come and go sun
never the same
not the one we knew this morning
it won’t be this afternoon’s
the things I know on my rounds around
never before
and won’t be again
my own mud prints
yesterday’s leaves fallen
everything just once in its while
I call this my garden
all eyes about
touch the stone to steady on
I hear the first bird ever
here’s edge of cliché as any word is
here’s difference and there’s repetition
who were just now
now just as gone!
I’m seeing now what won’t be again
where I’ve never been before
Mist
Its
beauty burns away in the day
but
last night it filled, overbanking
the
valley and up to the window catch
like a
wave over an ocean headland, below
only a
monochrome Lloyd Rees over
everything
known, no snow gum, too
erasing
winter-wood stacks, all down-
covered,
blanked, familiar boundaries’ absolute
reassurances
lost and with them the courtesy
of
belonging. Last night driving, who
trailed
wraith tendrils across Thursday,
what put
another realm there, dared it
to
wrap the headlights in its touch,
car
surging through the moment, sped up
as if
through amnesia, to give eye
back
its parameters and there! the thwack,
a
night-bird’s wings angel-spread against
deep
blue. At home’s glow, mist
is lost
to dog bounce, baked apple, its ghostly
unreality
reasserts noiselessly, wrapped about
the
house, when lights-off night vision
reveals
a moon riding high: its light belongs
on the
mist, in the valley, it’s not culpable
for
blotting out our containment, this
moment
all is only mist, sky and moonlight,
the
beginning of something very old, right now.
Written
in response to Kit Kelen’s ‘Waiting for Alfred’ using the last word in each of
his poem’s lines as the last word in each of this poem’s lines.
Thank you Kit for the invitation to this garden and to Cathy Stirling for the prompt to contribute. On the theme of gardens and childhood, m...
