Falling up through the hole in the roof

When I see you now,
it is from orbit, blinking unseen
across a sky too bright

A Brisbane Afternoon Time-Lapse

Cardboard cutout clouds stack up
Heavy with the town’s collective breath
Above the sausage tree and strangler figs

Slender palms like nervous schoolkids
Line up by the shallow water
While the bell hangs still and silent

The rainstorm breaks
In a Busby Berkeley dagger-dance
Across the writhing river

The rain returning home
Makes a heady aromatic tea
In the gutter’s gum-leaf dams

I am excited to see The Nemo’s time-lapse project up and running. Splendid work, sir!

29 January 2012

1.

The rain says, “stay; be still,”
and so I let ink follow water,
try to catch the words
that fall from the sky.

2.

birds flock to the feast -
his smile makes the smallest things
into carnivals

27 January 2012

Two small stones today. Train travel makes it easier

1.

One Winter tree, skeletal,
stranded in a verdant rainstorm field -
a picture hung on the wall
of this new home

2.

The ibis,
.     long legs half-vanished
.          in these impromptu lakes,
like lanky spear-fishers
.     before the sails and shackles,
dance
.     and probe
.          at what the rain washed out
and do not turn
.     to watch
.          the train roar past.

25 January 2012

Tapes from the early 1990s
An archive of my youthful heartbeat
Every note, every place I’ve been
Printed into the patterns of my flesh

A radio telescope trained to a distant star
Reveals the image of our own beginnings

24 January 2012

grey cloud, white noise day -
a thousand new-made rivers
breach our clear-cut lines

23 January 2012

Fresh-cut grass, strangler fig and mulch
The butcher-bird’s song on soothing grey breeze
The moan of machinery

Old stones – not to be tied to,
But rather, to stand on
While I reach towards new light

Soft rain-drops on my face

Later, I watch the curtain of it,
Breathe the sweet that counters sweat,
Want to sever my ties to time
That I may turn my face up to the rain -
A dialogue between sea and sky
With me in the middle
Feeling the flow at last

One day soon

4 January 2012

I forgot I’d managed to write one for yesterday when I got home in the wee hours of this morning, so wrote two today to make up for the imagined shortfall.

1.

Old memories echo in the laughter of new friends.
The clock hands blur as I melt in to the couch
And the missed last train is just a chance
To breath the crisp, cool moonlight night.

2.

Sleep is a dark cloud coming in low on a gale
and dreams, the curls of sunset glowing at its edges.
The drumming of the rain grows louder.

2 January 2012

The new year is welcomed by cherry blossoms
barely even shivering.

Poetry, Philosophy, Insight, Biography and All That Is Good

Sarah Kay at TEDx East. Warm tears and love.