A Whisper of Writers

 A little poem from a quiet moment with my writer's group, three years or so ago....

AT WRITERS GROUP

When the Magpies and

squabbling Rosellas

have gone,

for now

The creak and scratch

of pen and paper

is all the sound

I hear

But listen – just then

the fireplace creaked

A distant dinosaur

growls its diesel roar

Small feathered bells tumble

through shadowed leaves

A page turns

A writer sighs

Outside a crow

calls the falling sun

The fridge

hums back to life

Look Again

 Our Writing Group retreated to a sort of electronic arm's length during 2021, and was just beginning to meet in person again in the latter part of the year.  It was suggested that we put together a series of short pieces based on several prompts that focused on a family, and this was my first response.... the actual prompt is the heading.

 

BUT WHEN SHE TURNED AND LOOKED AGAIN....

When I moved into the house where I hoped to rebuild my dreams, and my life, at 32 Swanson St (a true “renovator's delight” - long vacant while its previous owner faded away in aged care) my first encounters with the neighbours left me fearing my dream was really the opening act in a nightmare.

The friends helping me move were quick to spot the old man wandering in the front yard of number 34. He was a balding, lopsided, stooped shape that, if straightened out and rejuvenated, would have given any opposing rugby opponents pause. His crooked face was in constant motion. His eyes darted like pin-balls while a constellation of expressions that danced from delight to grimaces, and back again, with detours through anger, terror, and confusion as he muttered constantly, declaiming to some invisible audience, or demanding answers from the same unseen person, except when his eyes were fixed on me as I carried the detritus of my broken marriage from the footpath into my house of new hopes. Unsettled, I left the ferrying of goods to my friends and began to unpack the kitchenware and prepare a morning tea for the workers.

A tumbling flash of red and white outside my kitchen window became a football soaring over the fence from the back yard of number 30 and vanishing in the weeds of what I hoped would one day be my perfect garden. Seconds later, three boys threw themselves over the paling fence in pursuit of the ball, while other little heads popped up above the palings to watch their progress.

Now I knew where the background noise of yelling, shouting, screaming, and laughter had been coming from. Dust rose where tall weeds shook and the smallest of the boys burst into sight, ball clutched fiercely to his chest, his shirt-tails firmly in the clutches of one of the larger boys. His mouth fell open when he saw me staring at him through the glass. He pointed, and the others froze for a moment, before charging back to the fence and scrambling up and over. The silence was ominous, and soon broken by the angry voice a woman somewhere inside number 30, and the indignant arguments of children. Not a word was comprehensible, but the tone was fierce, and soon only the woman's voice remained.

As I stood listening, the backyard came into focus, and I saw things I hadn't noticed when the agent had shown me the house, weeks earlier. Planks and sticks and dead leaves were piled up in the furthest corner, and I realized that I was looking at a tepee, made by small hands. When I walked down and peered inside, there were toy cars, a home made bow and some arrows, and a home made ladder leading to the top of the fence overlooking the back corner of number 34. Movement and muttering again – the old man was now wandering his back yard, his head just visible above the fence.

What had I let myself in for? I went back into my new abode and supervised the placing of the few pieces of furniture I owned, opened a bottle of wine and thanked my friends for their help. Their toasts of good luck fell into a murky, troubled pool of apprehension, and I was sorry to see them drive away. Number 30 was back to full volume; what were they fighting about now.? As I stood at my front door, cheering broke out from my right, while on my left, the battered old man was pacing back and forth between his letterbox and his front porch, more agitated than ever.

Suddenly, a horde of children, ranging from teen to toddler swept down the front path at number 30 and clattered along the footpath to where the old man had, paused at his gate. As I watched in fearful anticipation, he smiled, patted the smallest girl on the head, and then suffered himself to be led into his house by two teenage girls. A tall boy cradled a foam vegetable box as he followed them, and I realized I could smell cooked meat – was that roast lamb? Did one of those girls call the old man Poppy? I jumped as a throat cleared itself behind my right shoulder, and as I turned to look again in the direction of my letter box, I found myself face to face with two of the fence jumpers.

They were standing just outside my gate, looking much cleaner than they had earlier, one of them holding something covered in a tea towel. As my brain grappled with the sight, my nose clutched at the scent of warm, fresh baked cake. I blinked, and looked from them to the empty front yard of number 34, and back to them. The bigger boy spoke.

“That's Pop” he said “He's mum's grandpa – he's really old. We take him dinner every night” he added, shuffling his feet “Mum sent us to say we're sorry about jumping the fence, and we'll come after school tomorrow and clean up our fort in the back yard, if that's alright, and she said you would like this cake. She just made it. It's our favourite” 

A babble of voices announced the return of the party from number 34, and I looked again at the two earnest faces in front of me. I had to swallow before I could speak, and by then the other children were waiting quietly by my letterbox, gazing at their siblings and the stranger who had taken over their playground.

“I haven't unpacked my plates or cutlery properly yet” I said, finding my voice “Do you think it would be alright if I came in and shared the cake with you guys and your parents? I can bring some drinks”

“There's just Mum, and she loves visitors” the younger boy said, and grinned “and she loves white wine”

“Give me half a minute and I'll be right in – save a slice of cake for me”

Leaving

 A little something done to a prompt from another member of our little writing group - people whose creativity and support are most excellent to share at any time, but certainly during another Covid lock-down.........  the prompt was one word - "Leaving" - to be done as a single page, and, as such prompts always do, produced five very different approaches.  This was mine....

 

LEAVING:

When he left, he hadn't thought he might be leaving forever – that what he was leaving behind would not, one day, offer him familiar comforts upon his return home, and those he was leaving would not be waiting to warmly welcome him into their arms. Now, so many years later, he wondered how much of that long ago life would be left, should he find his way back to the place in which he had been formed.

The welcoming arms were gone, he knew – wrinkled, then withered, and, finally, crumbled into dust; only the leavings of memory remained, thin and faded and comfortless. What was left of his childhood home had been, the letter said, left to him, though how much of those past comforts might be left by now was questionable. The letter carried a date from a year left far behind; it had traveled, and waited, and travelled again – lured on in pursuit of its beneficiary by tales and wild rumours left in his wake, left in the care of someone who longed to see him again, passed on to fresh hands as that hope faded and died, time and again, down the length of a turbulent decade.

Had some recipient of the letter been prescient in their choice of place and person for its next destination, or had he somehow doubled back on his own tracks, and met it coming after him? The date, when he finally opened it, untouched by any sense of its possible significance, left him momentarily stunned, and then amused. Its contents, those few dry, terse, officious paragraphs, had left him empty of breath, heartbeat, and feeling. How long had he sat there, unaware of the world, before the senses that had left him so suddenly returned in a wave of pain and disbelief.

How had that time passed so quickly? How could he have not returned when he was needed? Why had he not kept himself informed? The answer came quickly, in the calls and laughter of his team mates, the revving of engines, and the clatter of luggage and equipment. His comrades were almost ready to leave this little oasis of safety and satiety in pursuit of the next adventure, and he would be leaving with them, no matter what the letter in his hands had to say. Whatever had been left him in that missive was from the past – the leavings of a life he could never return to, even if he wanted to.

Boots clattered down the stairs outside his room, and the door shook under the knocking of a gnarled fist. He let the letter slip from his fingers and left it to curl and blacken in the flames of the fireplace as he shouldered his gear and left the past where it belonged.

-----------00000-----------

 

 

Peace

 

 

 Four voices soothe the soul:

The happy chatter of the stream as it tumbles among the rocks,

Sheoaks singing the evening breeze,

The quiet mutter of flames in the camp-fire, and

The tender greeting of your beloved as you sit down beside her at the fire

The Second Step's a Doozy

Did I say that the journey began with a single step?  As true as that is, the next step can easily be a detour not imagined when the first one was taken - and so it has turned out.  This has been a year filled with side-tracks, diversions, and unexpected busyness.

 

When our government announced Covid lockdowns and restrictions on mingling with other people, my wife and I looked at each other and shrugged.  

"Not keen on crowds" we said to each other "and always happy pottering in our own garden and doing our own thing - sounds like we have been handed an excuse to live our lives in a fashion most congenial to us"

Within days, we found ourselves "in loco parentis" to grandchildren who had been sent home to do their studying online for an indeterminate period.  What fun!  What wonderful mental exercise for us as we reached back five decades or more to our own long lost schooldays, in search of discarded bits of geometry and algebra - it was amazing just how many forgotten formulae surfaced from the depths.  What wondrous new skills and words did we acquire as we grappled with the many and varied types of software chosen by the many and varied teachers who, only the previous week, had the pleasure of close daily learning experiences with those grandchildren, but now had to find, on short notice, ways of teaching them via the internet. Everyone involved found themselves on the proverbial "steep learning curve" - a trite business cliche that, for once, was deadly accurate.

 

 

 

So much has happened since then - in our family, our community, our country, and the wider world - and we have, like so many others, been busy just keeping up with it all.  Somehow, the time allotted to matters creative was nibbled away by the effort involved in keeping ourselves afloat, and helping other family members in worst straits than us - until the inevitable happened.  The long lapse in creative work began to feel inexcusable, and recommencing the work seemed almost impossible - the creative impulse was swamped by a sense of guilt and failure.

 

 

 

Now, the warnings of the scientists are again proven true, despite the wishful political thinking that had gained the upper hand, and Christmas is to be held under restrictive conditions, due to the virus once again slipping through our defences. 

 

The garden is soggy, but productive, as La Nina helps us recover from the horror and dessication of last summer's drought and bushfires - our creek is busy with minnows, crayfish, and small perch (who are growing fast) but no trout - the cicadas have had a bumper year, and the night is full of frog song. Clutches of ducklings, baby magpies, and parrots have visited our garden with their parents, learning which of the neighbourhood humans are soft touches for a bit of extra tucker. One of my 18 year old Apple Tree bonsais has flowered for the first time, and set tiny fruit.

 

 

 

The human grandchildren have resumed normal schedules, and we can allow the trigonometry and calculus to slip back into the oblivion of ancient memory - and now, with time on our hands, there is no excuse for not picking up the frayed threads and setting to work again.  Let's see what next year brings.  Ours has turned out pretty well, in the end - I hope it all comes good for you, too.

A Journey of a Thousand Smiles can Beguine with a Single Step onto the Dance Floor...

.... or down that Forest Path Less Travelled, or any other place where your imagination both yearns and fears to go.

Green Respite

It has been a  couple of months since I last posted, and for much of that time I have been carrying buckets and watering cans around my gardens, fighting a rearguard action against advancing drought and heat.  When the restricted time allowed for watering each morning has passed, it has been out with the rakes and pruning gear, refreshing fire breaks, or up the ladder, cleaning gutters of the dead needles strewn from the Casuarinas by the hot, dry winds of spring and summer.

There was one half decent fall of rain in November, and a few miserly, drizzly showers in December, before the heat grew fiercer, the wind stronger, and the moisture was sucked from the ground again. 

As 2019 entered its final weeks we watched the northern ranges of NSW burn, and then, as Christmas approached, the central ranges were aflame, along with the southern ranges and coast, as well as much of Victoria, South Australia, West Australia, and Tasmania.  Smoke became our atmosphere as gardens wilted and the younger trees and shrubs began to die.  Lawns, well, they turned tawny long ago, and were now crumbling into the dust.

The stream beside our garden, once a reliable place to fish for trout, perch and yabbies, was reduced to a few shallow, muddy, smelly puddles, from which, after the temperatures passed 40 degrees Celsius, I had to net and bury the floating carcasses of oxygen deprived fish.  The level of the lake at the head of our little Valley on the Mountain began falling faster as the water bombing helicopters joined the westerly wind in sucking up its water.

As the smoke grew thicker, ash and charred leaves began to gently drift down and sprinkle everything with grey and black. The sound of sirens became just part of the ambient noise of the Mountains, and the news grew ever more alarming. Computers were set permanently to displaying the RFS fire maps and playing the local RFS radio frequency, in the hope that it might give us sufficient warning should the fires to our north and south suddenly change course.

Across the country, houses and then whole villages were destroyed, and lives were lost, including fire fighters.  Whole towns were forced to wade or drive into the salt water as flames of a ferocity not seen before charged all the way to the back of the beach.  Other towns didn't have the luxury of lake or ocean to flee to.

In one case a surge of fiery wind flipped a ten ton fire tanker over, killing one of its crew and injuring the others.  I have been in some pretty lively fires over the years, and been singed several times in the fighting of them, but I had never seen, or heard of, anything like that before.  Trees falling on or near trucks, and crown fires sweeping overhead and forcing crews to turn on the cabin spray bars and hunker down under fire blankets - yep, not so uncommon in the world of bushfire fighting, but that was just beyond anyone's experience.

The conversation here in the Mountains turned to safe places and suitable evacuation destinations - to stay and fight, or get out now, rather than be caught in heavy traffic on the long, bush-lined, winding road to the safety of the City on the Plain. 

As the smoke grew darker and the ash fell thicker, the air tankers began their bombing runs, laying long red swathes of water and fire retardent along the village edges.  Villages once described by real estate agents as "leafy refuges from the bustle of city life" were suddenly tiny, dangerously exposed enclaves within a huge expanse of potentially explosive forest and bush.  More houses and sheds burned, and residents who had not already fled were being told to take cover as it was now too late to leave safely.

Then the weather, at least on our Mountain, turned, and in less than two weeks we have had more rain than fell in the final three months of 2019.  RFS stations across much of the state have "stood down" and for the first time in many, many weeks, their roller doors are closed - their tankers quietly parked inside.  In Victoria, the battle continues, while in parts of Queensland, the fire fighters have retired but the SES is now flat out dealing with storms and flooding.  Oh, Australia....

At first glance, the green we Mountains Folk are accustomed to has returned.  The air no longer smells of charred bush, and the lawn mower had its first exercise since very early spring.  Dig deeper though - scratch among the mulch for example and find dry pockets of soil, or wander down to the barely trickling creek and look at its exposed, muddy banks, and it is obvious we have received a respite rather than a complete reprieve. Three or four days of hot westerly wind and we could be facing the fires again.

But for the moment, we are enjoying the cool and damp.  The ducks who normally lived by the shady pool down stream from the orchard had left us, but are back now that the water has returned to their favourite bathing spots - and little swirls show where, somehow, a few minnows survived the worst couple of weeks when the creek had only one small but shaded pond left for them to swim in. 

Perhaps, in a season or two, there will be redfin perch in our pools again, but I doubt the water will ever again be consistently cool enough to keep trout happy and healthy.

Our Magpies are happily finding food on their own account, instead of relying on scraps of mince from us to keep their younglings half satisfied.  We even had a visitor not seen before - a juvenile Ibis.

The grandkids wanted to name it Bin Chicken, but we settled on Binni - and he or she did a fine job of thinning out the snails and slugs that reappeared all over our garden within a couple of days of the first good rainfall.

Binni appears to have moved on again.  If the rain keeps falling, as it is again just now, we might be able to move on from this awful time and enjoy regrowth and green shoots.  If only our "leaders" would also move on from whatever venal or ideological fixation it is that has crippled their willingness to deal with the all too evident, looming disaster that is climate change.  Oh, Australia...