National Poetry month #9

 Sunset is behind us - so in front, the upmost branches of a line of giant eucalypts is lit golden. The air is still and chill. Anticipatory.

Already people gather around the campfire. One takes a picture of the treetops. "It won't do it justice," she says, "but it'll serve to remind me - memory and imagination will do the rest." I know what she means.

Robert Gray is a poet who observes minutely and creates verse-snapshots that - after careful readings - our imaginations (re)form in our minds.

Another poet who sees and observes is Stephen Edgar. Further, he places his images within a cashmere frame of rhyme and rhythm. It is impossible to not admire the skill; more than possible to fall a little bit in love with the results. Read this one aloud, paying attention to sounds as well as sights, and you will find yourself drawn deeply into scenes you all know well, by the way the words and lines move and are held together by the gentle rhythm and rhyme.

So, a few simple backyard images... until the last line drops and suddenly we're reminded about the significance of the quotidian and our place in it all.

Here and Now by Stephen Edgar

A rustle in the leaves. One lorikeet

Emerges on a bending stem

To dangle,

While feeding upside down among the sweet

Grevillea flowers at a reckless angle.

In real time, the shadows under them

Make copies on the courtyard bricks.

A skink

Lies practising its brilliant stratagem,

To stare into the sun and not to blink,

A miniature bronze sculpture, till it licks

An errant ant with perfect aim.

The sky,

Drying in blue enamel, tries to affix

One cloud in place before it passes by.

A curtain cord taps on the window frame

Arrythmically in a faint breeze,

As though

Too quick to hit the beat, making the same

Mistake a few times, then, instead, too slow.

A sort of dreamlike present tense - which frees

The mind from the entanglements

Of nerve

And muscle, all those hinged complexities

We're made of, with their claims on those they serve - 

A sort of disembodied present tense

Pervades this setting to suspend

The day,

As though you were what you experience,

Part of the elements through which you stray,

Persuading you that this will never end.