Home / New Poems / Gallery / Archives
The Green Hills
This section has all the poetry relating to my experience of the natural world. Some are about the pure experience and others are more political in encouraging respect and preservation of the environment.
Sometimes I read poems Mountain time On this enchanted evening Cicadas Fishes dream Glorious Inferno in a Christmas tree forest Love, thought, care New Material!
Sometimes I read poems
As if they were holiday brochures.
I think what it would be like
To be in the orchard or look over that sea wall
Or just to talk to someone that cares for words
Or to say nothing and gaze in mute wonder
At a landscape they have written all over
Get ready I’m packing!
This place summons time to my mind because,
In a sense this place is timeless.
The world could pass you by and you would not know it.
Sunlight is transposed into heavy rain,
Then in a few days the sun shines again.
One moment melts into another,
Time treads by on soft feet.
It is a good place to retreat and find release.
In this place time has slowed,
Plans and decisions can grow over days
I am not shunted or shuffled
Here I can be stationary and gaze at the sky
Without asking why I am pausing to do so.
On this enchanted evening
The cool breeze is leaving
Its’ caress on my hot skin.
I can smell cut grass drying,
I can hear the cat bird crying
And a stream softly flowing
Not knowing where its’ going
Gently clapping, sound lapping,
Like the flight of birds,
A flock of pigeons I disturbed
With wings the colour of light.
High above black cockatoos where flying
Crying with such power
I thought there is majesty
And a mystery above me.
When I listened softer
I heard cicada’s offer a singing
That rang within my ears.
With the creak of leather from my sandals
Like a horses bridle
All this to see and hear and feel,
On one enchanted evening
Of many in the year.
Click the sticks,
Mix it
With the whirring spin of a womera,
The thrumming of a digerydoo.
Take all this and you are listening to Cicada Rhythms.
Listen to the thunder snap and crack across the sky
As it fades in an interchange between rain particles
Charged and changing into lighting and sound,
Then Listen to the Cicada,
Clicking back and forth between two tribes of insects
Slow at first and then spinning tighter and higher
Until suddenly you hear a wider symphony
Underpinned by the choke croaking of frogs,
The singing ringing calls of birds.
The Cicada responds to tonal changes
Between sun and clouds
When shadow draws its shroud.
Ancient insects those, on moss and tree and rosey bark.
Roses grew in a field of wheat,
Down in the hollows a slow stream weeps
Overlapping it’s edges it dredges rich silt
From the bed of the creek.
In that primordial stream life teams,
Fishes dream,
Dragonfly’s lift their gleaming wings
Frogs sing, and mosquitoes swarm.
In the early morning light
Immerse yourself up to the brim
So that your eyes rest within
The surface territory,
With its floating cities of lily pads.
Down in the dark mud,
Weeds weave about your feet.
But unlike the sedentary tree
You can release yourself into the stream
Or dive into a country unseen.
Drive yourself forward with strong limbs
Later, swim to the bank and struggle to climb.
Hours after you emerge from the water,
Your blood sings with the rivers soft strains,
You feel the touch of ghostly weeds
Which seem to plead,
Come back to the water.
Those torrents of soft vegetation
That mingle and make sense,
Of the damp and pungent earth.
Here on Mt Glorious
The sun and the rain,
Have made the air humid again.
You amidst it all, fall down steep slopes
Impeded by the prickly lantana.
That infesting yet beautiful weed
Which laces the edges of sun lit places.
Finally you pause and gaze up at the canopy,
A brief mosaic of leaves against blue intensity,
Then you are driven into the density of cool shade
Collecting your scattered twig filled hair.
Feeling the mosquito bites and the tingle
Of your scratched skin.
Distant voices guide you back
To find that strand of barbed wire fencing
That runs like string through this labyrinth
Then mysteries will draw you on
In this territory, that in this moment, is owned by none.
Inferno in a Christmas tree wood
I walked in the Christmas tree forest,
Admired the baubles hung from each branch
But I wouldn’t steal from this wood.
I came to a clearing and saw a bright lady standing tall,
Dressed in spring and surrounded by deer.
At first her face was filled with light,
She drew the children near
She threw fruit to us.
Instead of looking up at her
I began to scramble for the falling gifts,
Fending off the others
Stealing from my little brother.
Then the air was filled with burning,
The bright lady was an inferno!
She burned like a plastic doll,
Her hair alight and falling,
Her expression still smiling,
She had frozen.
I wound a key to set her turning.
A crowd drew near and I thought,
They will be pleased with me!
But why should they be pleased?
Locked out from her small bounty
She slowly disintegrated,
I thought an adult has stolen my story.
I see that each trinket valued by humanity
Passed through two hands to get to me,
But I want only stars and diamonds.
I see each book I read
Felled a thousand trees
But I want only dust and words.
I see each person that I meet
Has been hurt a hundred times
And I want only one more smile.
What does the world want from me?
To fell another thousand trees?
The same that I want from you
Love, Thought care.
