Day upon
day is a
rising struggle, a
bark in the dark
and a claw at the
leash.
If you see me
blackdoglike
with my paws
scratching frantic,
then take my
dull aching
in hand til I’m
still.
My own garden I have neglected
Gather your spiritual bouquet…
(Francis de Sales)
Plenteous winter rain left
the backyard a grassy forest
where mallow and clover ran riot
and kikuyu spread its runners wide.
The rhizomatic tangle, lush and unbeatable,
enfolded in itself a toddler’s trucks,
a sandpit shovel, a bouncy ball, a peg,
and I, bent on order yet at odds with nature,
push a feeble mower through the shin-high jungle,
and vainly seek a clearing
to untangle my mind.
The first day of spring
began with honeysuckle and clover,
the constants of the winter yet
rendered more redolent by the scents of September
and a bee buzzing about a flowering cactus
and ended with a downpour
that sent me rushing to the clothesline
while my son stood in his raincoat and listened
to the rain
with all things – rain, sun, bee,
child and flowers – held in the same sentence
and each given its time.
Noah’s Ark: For Eli
I.
Delighted by animals, God and rain,
my son finds kinship in Noah’s ark,
commentating the story as I leaf through his Bible:
“Rain! Giraffe. Boat. Noah. Wet. Monkeys!”
How to convey what
a rainbow’s about, or how I long
for him and his brothers to be
kept safe in the ark
as the flood passes by.
II.
After the night’s deluge, I spot
a raven atop a traffic light,
tree-branch in beak,
heralding the hope of dry land.
The lights change, I drive ahead.
No flood will overwhelm today.
III.
This afternoon he found
some joyfully fluffy infant ducks
in a book and, excited, pointed them out:
“Clucklings!” he exclaimed, and how I wished
that our language could change
to make them be clucklings forever.
IV.
Reading a story of sloths, I asked,
“Do you think there were sloths in Noah’s ark?”
While he gave this all his toddler’s thought,
I amused myself with images of
the haste with which Noah packed the ark
the sloths sabotaging all his speed,
yet saved, thank God, all the same.
Testimony of Earth
For this demon who harms men and corrupts them is particularly anxious that his servants not gaze up to heaven but instead that they be bent over to the earth and make bricks inside themselves from clay.
(Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses)
At the moment of exhaling, he sanctified
the clay he shaped by his outbreathing, yet
sacred clay was only ever for shaping, not
to be shaped by. Instead
my eyes are always turned groundward and I
play in the mud pies of my mind despite
the heavenly witness that clamours for me with its voiceless speech
and, for lack
of willing human witnesses, rocks
clear stony throats to shout.
Sabbath
This afternoon, though I’d planned
a much-needed rest, many tasks overtook and
somewhere amidst assembling IKEA furniture I found
the afternoon gone and dusk charcoaling the sky,
so instead I walked
my toddler to the compost heap and there
we shredded paper scraps to balance the mix
and pulled weeds from the side garden while
my son trialled his latest words and declared “I want!”
as the evening air bristled and my fingers let go.
“The Swelling Year” is here…
Well, after seven years of writing and an intense few months of preparation, my book The Swelling Year: Poems for Holy and Ordinary Days is finally available for purchase. I was very excited this week to discover that, as well as being available directly from lulu.com, it can also be ordered at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and even from the Danish store Saxo.com. You can also preview it at Google Books if you want to see what it’s all about. I’m looking at ways of getting it into physical bookstores in Australia too, and I’ll update local readers on this when it happens.
Also, if you happen to be in Melbourne in November, drop by Christ Church Anglican in Brunswick at 2pm on 30 November for the official book launch. There’ll be readings by me, book signings, and live music from some of my very talented friends. I hope to see you there!
Meanwhile, once you’ve read The Swelling Year and want to tell others what you think, perhaps you could take a couple of minutes to review it at your online store of choice.
Learning to ask
Campaign Launch – The Swelling Year…
I’m very excited to announce that my crowdfunding campaign to publish The Swelling Year is ready to go. It is live now at Pozible.com, and will be there for the next 31 days for you to donate to. Check out the campaign page to find out about project details and rewards. We’re already underway with contributions, and there’s an opportunity for me to expand the first print run for the book if I get more than the budgeted $1250. So please be generous! I’m looking forward to seeing people get on board with a project that is close to my heart and that I hope will be an encouragement to many others.
I’m also excited to share for the first time the cover art designed by the talented Matthew Duncan. Find out more about his work here.
Little Flowers
“Not too many poets has it been given…to live one of their own poems.”
(G.K. Chesterton, St Francis of Assisi)
If I would be Francis, troubadour to God,
before I can sing Creation’s canticles, I must tend
to the sleeping children in my room
and die again, again to the self
that craves to be higher than them.
Only then can poetry shine,
until then being only words.
The Consolations of Writing 