Ideas unlimited

Walking in frangipanni

  

Here you walk into frangipanni like a wall

One moment you’re just walking

Enjoying the tropical bounty

And the next you’re breathing beauty

Heavy yet soft

Light as a summer’s breath

Sweet as your child’s kiss.

Here the days are hot and long

Finishing quickly with no lingering sunsets

The sun sets.  And that is done

For another day.  Time to go before

The mosquitos make another meal.

Time to think about tomorrow’s early starts

And decide a sensible early night.

But then you walk into frangipanni like a haze

Of lingering languor in the air

Thick and sweet as honey to the nose

One breath before paradise, that frangipanni breath

That says more than other ripeness

Though tropic life can be sweaty hot and calloused

It’s unbearably sweet to walk in frangipanni cloud.

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The faceless ones

 

I don’t know your name

I’ve not seen your face

But I know you were late

That Friday night.

Driving to Melbourne for the weekend

No time to stop for a rest

You toughed it out

Like a good driver would

And drove straight through

To save time.

Then you fell asleep at the wheel

And killed Simon.

 

I don’t know your name

I’ve not seen your face

But you were in a hurry after lunch

One Tuesday in the suburbs

You may have been late for a meeting

Just a little late, just a little tired

Trying to squeeze through

Just a little time, just a little space

Like a good driver would

You didn’t have room to overtake

And killed Eileen

 

Last night over dinner I saw your face

As you boasted to friends about your car

“The fastest thing in Shep” you said

and “Got me to Melbourne the quickest yet”

Hiding your ego behind your car

And revealing with every boast

Your low self esteem.

You didn’t kill anyone.

This time.

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Face down in the sand

Sometimes homesickness hits like a wave

That takes me and tosses me

And twists my legs from under me

And tumbles me breathless and shaking

Face down in the sand.

It can be as subtle as scent

A breath of Rive Gauche that reminds me

Of the dinners, and the gossip

And the night we played backgammon

Laughing until the dawn.

It can be as crass as a card

Just a card of a grey cat yawning

But suddenly I cry

Remembering the years of loving

Remembering what was and is no more.

It can be a phrase as small as Si Baba

Just two words that bring back Linda

And suddenly I’m back at Lanna Thai

Listening to Linda’s plans for India

Where she went to find her god.

And though I know that these things are past

And what once was can be no more

Sometimes homesickness hits like a wave

That takes me and tosses me

And twists my legs from under me

And tumbles me breathless and shaking

Face down in the sand.

 

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My Mother’s voice

 

I heard my Mother’s voice this morning

Thick with complacency as she rearranged

Another person’s life.

And in stunned silence watched my friend

Who’d told of troubles, asked advice and then

Listened to my Mother’s voice.

 

I’d run so far from my Mother’s voice

The thin tough stream of words that

Demanded instant obedience and complete control

That never-ending ceaseless stream of words

That never stopped to listen or to love

Oh, how I learned to hate my Mother’s voice.

 

I heard my Mother’s voice so clearly

Concisely, crisply rearranging my friend’s life

Knowing instinctively what was best for her

And heard that it was me.

And wondered if my Mother ever

Stopped to hear her Mother’s voice.

  

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I remember the Pi cat

I remember a kitten

too small to overhang my hand when I picked her up

who cried and crawled to my foot at a trash and treasure market

too weak to walk

A fighting kitten

who fooled the vet who said she was too sick to live

a kitten who survived cat flu before she was weaned.

 

I remember the Pi cat.

 

A kitten who believed she was a human

As soon as she lost the furry coat

A kitten who had to be taught to eat solids

And who tried to eat daintily with her paw

My darling kitten

Wet and spitting and frightened

Rescued from a bubble bath

into which she’d leapt to join me

(Perhaps she thought that’s how you lost the furry coat)

 

I remember the Pi cat.

 

I remember a kitten

finally weaned and greedy as all kittens are

a kitten who discovered a bowl of Chinese food

And ate and ate until she blew up like a football with legs

And then complained mightily.

 

I remember the Pi cat.

 

Half grown now, and put out to board

for a lonely month with the cousin of a friend who loved cats

This I believed, as the house was full of cats.

When my house was ready, and the Pi and I could be together

The cousin refused to give Pi up, saying she was too much loved

And that Pi loved her new home too much to want to leave it.

 

I went around to make sure because I too loved the cat

and at the sound of my voice a little grey cat yowled

and streaked in from the yard to leap into my arms.

 

I took my Pi cat home.

 

We’ve loved and lived now for 17 years in her new home

And many times we laughed;

I’ll swear the cat laughed too

And the many times I cried Pi was there to pat me

To tell me without words that I was loved

My beautiful argumentative Pi cat

The growling tough cat who always fought me as I made the bed

Arguing each pillow case and sheet

and running under the doona to play find me now.

 

I remember the cat who played the guilt game

Sitting in the front window doing silent miaows

As I ran for the late bus hating myself for leaving her alone

Only to find that she visited eight neighbours in turn one by one

For morning tea and lunch and afternoon nibbles

As soon as I was out of sight.

 

My beautiful fat Pi cat.

 

I can’t forget the Pi cat

Lying on the vet’s table

Tired and dispirited, yet trusting me

As the vet diagnosed leukemia

And said the only way to save my cat

My beautiful Pi cat

From increasing suffering and fits and eventual painful death

Was a blood transfusion from a close relative

How do you find a close relative

Of a cat who was spayed 17 years before.

 

I can’t forget my Pi cat

Lying on the vet’s table

How she snuggled when I held her

How she tried to purr as I held her

How she died.

 

She sleeps in that garden now

Under a daisy bush.   Her favourite flower

Carnations were for biting the heads off and arranging

In neat mathematical precision down the hallway

While the smelly daisy was a bush to sniff and love

And roll on your back and inhale and smile

And emerge from underneath with a secretive cat glance.

 

I buried her in her garden

That garden that had been her domain for seventeen years

And planted a daisy over her to guard her rest

Before I left her, and her garden, and her house

So echo empty now without my Pi.

As am I.

 

---

The Peace Within

I woke before six and saw you still sleeping

And not wishing to disturb your rest

I dressed and left alone

Crossed the sleeping hotel gardens

And the dreaming road

To sit on the dark beach

The small waves lapped, the dark hill dreamed

A tiny bright star flickered

Accompanying a small sliver of moon

Over the black pines.

Across the bay the city lights gleamed gaily

Proving that the whole world didn’t sleep.

While the sky brightened imperceptibly

I found I was breathing

In time with the bay.

The seas.  The trees.  The sky.  And I.

All breathing together in exuberant life

To celebrate the joyous place within.

 

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DOORS

The man at the garage door turns with a vague smile

And no recognition in his eyes as I walk to him

“Hello” he says, and smiles with a great charm

And a vast emptiness behind his eyes.

One day forty years ago he chose another door

Leaving the navy that had taken a young boy

Barely out of school; and six years later disgorged

A man who had survived Malta and the Murmansk run

But who still woke shaking in the night

And who escaped the horrors of the old world

By running to a new life in a new space.

The man at the garage door smiles again at me

And picks vaguely at flaking skin

“Nice of you to come and see me” he says

And “Here’s the birds coming to be fed”

“They rely on me, you know” he confides

One day thirty years ago he walked through another door

I don’t know what he thought then

Leaving his wife and child for his new love

And running to a new exciting life

Escaping the silly matrimonial games of monster and martyr

That they played with frightening devotion

Convinced that the only rule was to win no matter what.

The man at the garage door smiles with great charm

And asks where I live.  I tell him gently “Here”

And he smiles again and says “Good.  Good.”

And “Here’s the birds coming to be fed”

“They rely on me, you know” he confides.

One day ten years ago he chose another door

I didn’t know him them and don’t know why

He chose Alzheimers as a release from his life

Louise Hay says it’s an inability to face life as it is

But his life must have been a dreadful echoing emptiness

To choose not to remember, to be a child forever

To choose this door, this living death, as escape.

The man at the garage door turns and smiles at me

“I know you, don’t I?” he whispers “Sometimes I don’t remember”

“Don’t worry” I say “It’s okay, Dad”

And he smiles again, reassured, and says “Good”

And “Here’s the birds coming to be fed”

They rely on me, you know” he confides.

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