City Music

Like a wet swimsuit the cold day clung.
Outside the library, under the porch cover
An Asian teenage boy at an old upright piano
Gifted into the air endlessly chuckling Chopin
And everyone was smiling.

I followed the drifting notes across the road
Over the traffic’s wet hiss and horn,
Up rain-slick steps beside the Art Gallery.
A CD player and speaker, on the paving,
And eight formal couples dancing tango.

The mens’ legs between the women’s,
The women’s spines like spoon handles.
The couples’ eyes following their joined hands,
A boat prow through concrete seas.
Everyone walked past more seriously,
Thinking of their relationships.

The sun shone on glowing grass and paua puddles.
The Moreton Bay figs, wide apart feet in polished shoes,
Danced with raised arms joined together.
And then, across Albert Park in the university quad
Another upright piano , under a plexiglass awning.

A Polynesian woman smiled at the keys,
Repeated a phrase, all concentration,
Added more notes, then tossing her head back,
Smiled at her guy draped over her shoulder.
Raindrops beading the awning hung long.

Just me watching and listening this time,
Full to the brim with music, a jug about to pour.
With lightened heart  and  in celebration
I turned Symonds Street into a dance floor
And boogied  my library books to the bus stop.

This is how people really are,I thought.
This is how they are.
With a finger flourished  like a baton
I turned off my world news notifications. 

*

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Jif

I am on my knees on the bathmat
Scrubbing the toilet bowl
With Jif,  “with microparticles.
For maximum cleaning and minimum scrubbing.”

Modest Jif, my labour- saving  maid,
Standing in her stiff long dress.
I pay for her with cash,
And probably with all of living nature.

She can be a flirtatious lover
Playing the mixed message game:
“Unique creamy ingredients,” as well as
“If swallowed, remove from mouth.”

Then again her motherly low expectations
Protect me from exhaustion and perfectionism:
“Avoid prolonged rubbing on a single spot.”

Jif , my guru, is cleverer than I.
She “solves really tough cleaning problems.”
Was there ever a woman who  solved  problems
While kneeling, scrubbing the toilet bowl?

My problem  today is the missing sock –
Tiny, black, with skeletons on it,
Rather than the Pacific gyre,
Microparticles in albatross chicks,
Or the volcano’s increasing fire.

Oh Jif, with your teasing language
So full of possibility and care,
Responsive to the gentlest squeeze,
Solve all my problems. 

Think for me, please.

Lost in Transmission

Although often obscured by other, larger, circling bodies 

And usually hidden  in the glare of its mother sun,

We occasionally glimpsed that singular blue green rock.

 

We saw how, after a chaotic launch party, and being knocked about,

This rock cleaned and preened itself, made a breathable atmosphere,

Made oceans, cells, plants, and learnt to hide its carbon waste. 

 

We wanted to award this planet the Universe Achievement Prize,

For its knowledge, resilience, .compassion, persistence

In the face of its imminent  annihilation .

 

Our tiny courier had plotted his ages-long course with care

But he hadn’t known the jealousy of the gas guard planets 

Whose outer orbits he’d have to cross.

 

They showed no sympathy for his loving mission, 

His gorgeous crafted finery, or even his song.

He was sucked into one of them and crushed, we think.

 

We withdrew our interest from the unreachable rock

And left it unaware that we were there

And had admired what it had wrought in vain.

*

Needing To Eat

Old woman, gently rounded with no waist,
Rugged up for warmth, arms out for balance,
Shuffles down shiny white supermarket aisle,
Eyes cast down, head tilted forward,
Hesitant, hungry, needing to eat.

She bends to the bottom shelf for the cheap sardines,
Cautious, afraid of careless children
Bumping into her.  She knows just one knock
Could send her sprawling
And bones could break.

She thinks of Antarctic penguins
How they waddle fast  to the ice edge
On short legs and stare down at the sea,
Hesitant, hungry, needing to eat,
How they wait for young, stupid penguins
That they can push into the water first,
A sacrifice, to satisfy a lurking, slippery seal.

Ambition

They leave the house to walk to school.
They must hurry.  She has places to go.
“What are you going to be,Grandma?”

What career will she choose – at last?
No. He lives in the bold, blind now.
“I’ll be a  roaring lion,” she says.

“No. You have to be a vehicle.”
“I’ll be a flatbed truck.”
“I am a flatbed,” he says. “You can’t be.”

“I’ll be a flatbed truck with a lion on it .”
“My flatbed has one of everything in the universe on it.”
“I’ll just be the lion then, on a bike.”

“Your lion’s jumped  onto my flatbed!” he laughs.
“You’ll never know what you should be, Grandma.”
He wins the  race up the hill. and they get  to school early.

A Star-Spangled Lantern

The gift of a gold-painted lantern wrapped in foil,
‘Oasis Living,’with star holes in the gold,
Reminded us of the oasis we live on,
A mere fleck of which is fresh water, friable soil.

Where to put it? Here, above the courtyard  table?
Its light scatters a glistening rain
Over the guacamole, the oat crackers,
The sushi, ravioli, the caviar, the champagne.

In the evening breeze’s  rising heat on its little hook,
It swings above our oasis’ homely homeostasis.
We now have speckled faces ,dimple dot.s. Look!
And now galaxies spin across our faces.

Around us everything we know is darkening.
It’s just us, under the lantern’s flicker,
The slick shower of  pretty glitter.
Lazy summer night. Nothing could be fitter.

Just us. No one comes here from afar
With weary thirsty animals, and whips –
Creaking buckles, bound bundles on sore backs –
Or in inexplicable ships.

Look! The flecked food is nearly gone. Where?
So many mottled measle’d mouths.
The lantern fades to shades of black
Someone slurs, ’S’faulty. Take it back.’

But  it’s just the battery. Flat.
We weren’t prepared for that.

Heroism in a Restaurant

‘I’m going to fight this,’ she’d said, a year ago.
Now, in this crowded Chinese restaurant,
A giant panda staring from the wall,
She is modestly marking, with her husband,
The end of the One Year War.

Outside their dome of soft candlelight
No one knows how battle-weary she is.
Such an earnest couple, nibbling like panda bears,
Conscientious, concentrating, heads bowed.

No one any more will visit armed with flowers.
No gust of friendship will nearly knock her down.
No one anymore will say, “Come this way,”
And “How are we today?”
And, please god, no one will ask how she feels.

It is all over – all that bright light attention.
No parade for her, with medals on her breast
Not even a certificate, and no breast either.
Just a discharge notice and the bracelet severed.

“Well,” she answers, fondling her round glass,
Not entirely pleased with his keenness to move on,
“I’m putting out feelers. Something will turn up.
I’m getting on with stuff.”

Getting on is what those in remission do,
Secretly, discretely, like a panda in bamboo
*