in a garden wet with rain..

she comes for lunch.. she comes with her husband on the train.. just before it reaches the station she calls.. I press the receiver hard against my ear to hear a jumble of train clatter/broken whistling/the phone fading and coming back and in all that her voice is there so polished and fine -so English- Where do we go? her directional skills are wobbly so I stand in the kitchen and put myself in her shoes stepping onto the platform.. tell her to look back from where they've come and go right.. right and I hope that's enough.
it is.. my husband picks them up and brings them home and we lean into each other on the doorstep like late blooming roses.. friends from 18 to 58.. years of sunshine and rain..


asparagus from kooweerup / rocket / ham/ tomatoes / crumbly cheese / cracked pepper / mayonnaise /balsamic vinegar/ multigrain/ whitebread
vino/ beer(cuba59) water/ juice/ tea
strawberries/ kiwifruit/ bananas/
hazelnut wafers
tea in a pot

good talk/family photos/stories
we watch 2 films Dan's made
i take them for a drive to the gravel-edged road over the hill and not far from town where the green silence comes to me..
they get it too..

time to go..
on the way out she notices the garden.. it's been hot this week .. day after day of high 30s.. roses all wilted..


and now in a warm kitchen on a saturday night.. rain pouring on the roof, at the door and all around the garden..I'm on my own inside the wet music.. a train tooting at the end of the street ..I just want to say that she taught me something else today..the art of deadheading geraniums.. meditative she said.. under the eaves and all along the fence the geraniums had flowered and tossed their pink heads in the heat.. I'd wished the colours back but hadn't thought of doing much to look after them.. just expected they'd come back in time. which they do.. but home in Bristol she has to keep the gs in window boxes and told me if I kept cutting them back they'd flower on and on..
so, after they left I went out and stood in the garden ..the rain had come.. couldn't believe how many geraniums there were.. spindly knitting needles with tufts of pink, red and white petals that came off so easily in my hand.. I tossed the broken stalks back into the leaves and stayed outside breaking off those old spent flowers holding the umbrella like a wand in the other hand until it got dark..
it's meditative she said...
it is

walking with my dog..

most nights i walk the dog. i think i do it for his sake as much as my own. i like walking and sometimes i believe it wouldn't be such a hard thing to actually walk around the whole of australia. bit by bit i think you could just keep going until you did the circuit.
probably just a silly thought really but i do enjoy walking along and i think i've always been like this.. but having a dog who needs a walk/loves a walk helps..
tonight about 6.30 so still quite light.. after i'd had tea and the house was all silent-nightish what with Dan out filming and PC at the ballet with Pip i took Paddy up to the petrol station to buy a copy of the Herald-Sun.. M has his regular weekend pieces in but until someone at school told me i didn't know he had his photo as well so was keen to see it for myself..
walked up alright but they'd sold out and the grumpy attendant in the shop told me he didn't have any idea where i'd get the paper .. he was so blunt i was out of the place tout de sweetie..
decided to go back home via the car yards.. lots of little garden delights on the way.. no interest in the cars .. humvee hohum..
as i passed a driveway i noticed a black scottish terrier was wandering about with a long red lead dragging along beside him. he got a bit frisky with paddy but nothing too risky in fact i saw how overweight blackie actually was and i had a quick mental picture of a tubby scotsman wolfing down another chocolate cupcake while i was pulling paddy away and on the path to home.. noone about so blackie kept on walking with us.. waddling really... and after we'd passed 2 houses as a threesome i began to worry that the owners would wonder where he was.and why i was taking him.. i picked up the lead and started walking back with the two terriers.. i got to the open gate and a thin sickly looking man was standing there .. actually i could tell straight away he was drunk.. pock-marked skin, strong liquor smell all around him and pie-eyed but so friendlylike.. i held out the lead and he tried to take it. it dropped on the ground as i passed it over so there was this lost time while he scrabbled around and got it in his hands.. so grateful he was.. then he looked slightly worried and motioned further up the street with his hand and said "the other one is where??" in the distance i saw a large black ridge-back next to someone in a wheel-chair and they seemed to be moving away from us.. by this time i'd started walking off and called back to the fellow and told him his dog was coming back.. the wheelchair person was crossing the road and i could see the dog must have been lead by them ..we got closer to each other.. i could see it was a woman in the wheelchair, with a bright orange flag flapping above her.. she was on her way back and had a great soft smile on her face.. i told her i'd taken the other dog back and she was just so pleased.. a real goodness in her that i saw..
i was just glad i'd gone out walking..

birthday wishes..

It's my dad's birthday today..The day after the Melbourne Cup and the feast of St Charles Borromeo.. If Dad was still alive he'd be 96.. Because he died at 63 I have trouble picturing him as an old man.. Would he have shrunk in height? have any hair left? be able to see? hear? read? write? still drive? have a walking stick? sound really Aussie when he spoke? (he had a flat, plain voice though he could hold a nice note when he sang) Would he still be going to mass every day? Praying the rosary (his favourite prayer)? Reminding all of us that our main job on earth was to know love and serve God?

I wonder if he'd be outside watering the garden or cutting roses for the lounge room table.. Every now and then he'd have a dance in the kitchen with mum..there'd be hardly any room and she'd have an apron on but there was always a lightness in the way he held her.. she could have been a china vase.. As he got older would he have kept on doing repairs around the house? (he was so practical and could work out the way to do most jobs by himself that it was probably only the installation of an oil heater which never quite came off.. ) Would he have come and stayed with each of us in our homes after we'd married? I'd like to think he would. I wonder if he'd have been close to the 29 grandchildren and 10 great grandchildren who now make up the Devlin clan. Would he have read them stories? Taken them for a walk to the paddock? Shown them how to milk a cow? Mow a lawn? Paint a wall? Would he have encouraged them to barrack for the Tigers? C'arn the Tigers he'd say and he'd look like the boy he must have been in his inner city days.. all energy and camaraderie with his footy going mates..Sport was the one part of his life where he could turn off from the pressure of politics and work.. I wonder if he'd have tipped the winner of this year's Melbourne Cup? The race often fell on his birthday and I still think of it now as his special day.. At night in the week leading up to the race I'd see him studying the form.. He used a technique that involved listing the horses which had been selected only once by the Age and Sun tipsters to come 1st 2nd or 3rd, He'd examine each horse's form over recent starts before finally coming up with his choice. He used to say that those tipsters had some inside information that few people knew about.. This was the knowledge he was looking for when he sat at the table with the papers.. Afterwards it was only a matter of acting on that knowledge with a good bet at the TAB on the morning of the race.. I remember the few times when those leads paid off and he did a jig with the trannie in the kitchen after the race was over.. I liked seeing him this happy.. I liked seeing him relaxed..


I wonder if over the years he'd have become a little less rigid in his approach to life? I hope so..I think he'd have found it hard to change but maybe - that lovely double-sided word full of desire and possibility that lingers in the air when you say it slowly- MAY BE the happiness in the lives of his children might have lead him to think there could be other ways of living.. It was in his nature to think deeply about the purpose of life and he was often intense in conversation which affected his relationships with us.. For him there was just one reality and that was the truth of our Catholic faith.. Nothing else really mattered beyond the journey we were all on..He spoke about the state of grace as though it was a physical place we had to be in..Always..
Were we? Could we be? Was it really all that mattered?


I wonder if he would have ever got to the stage where he worried about the world a little less? Would he have softened his views about the Australian Labor Party? Probably not. I don't think he ever forgot the years before and after the Split.. How astonished he'd have been at the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of Communism! I remember how sad our house was when the Hungarian revolution happened.. I was just a small kid but the black and white photos in a Time/Life magazine haunted me for years after I saw them .. His fear that some similar thing might happen in Australia if the Commos took over scared me as well. I took so much notice of what he said.. So often he seemed to be right in the things he spoke about.. I knew he had no interest in wealth or position, he'd say all he wanted was a fair go .. Mum said he changed from the time they were first married when she recalls he was a lot more easy going.. His work with the trade union movement and later the National Civic Council seemed to bring out the worrier - and the warrior- in him.. He was always ready to attack Communist ideas or defend his Catholic beliefs..It just seemed like a hard way to keep the peace..

And so today November 4 2009 it's his 96th birthday.

I hope I see him again and I hope when we meet he'll know me as the daughter he loved as well as the woman I've become. I'd like to look once more into his grey-green eyes and see the part of him I loved .. his humility, his humour, his wisdom, his warmth.. I'd like to think he'll say he missed me too..

days like these..

Cold,
rain that comes and goes, comes and goes,
tree by the window shivering itself dry,
a slippery greenness covering the back yard.
On days like this I think of Gippsland.
After school I'd put on a coat and gumboots and walk across the road to get the cow.
Down by the velvet green of the bowling club-two carpets clipped and rolled-
past the house of the kids we never played with
and along the sponge of nature strip that ran all the way to the footy oval.
I 'd go in by the gate.

The paddock with its paths like old ropes tossed from the clouds,
a hidden creek, magpiesong, the cow waiting somewhere,
and my bootprints pressing into puddles of sky..

water poem..

i came upon this yesterday..

http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/video/2009/aug/27/swimming-lake-district

paddock..

for the last month i've been preoccupied with the idea of a book about Ireland.. my Ireland..


Edna O’Brien was a country girl too. I didn’t know that when I was growing up but when a friend gave me three of her books because he thought I’d like her “..the ground was speckled with little wild flowers. Little drizzles of blue and white and violet- little white songs spilling out of the earth” I couldn’t believe my luck. I saw the paddock!


The land that lay beside and behind the bowling green across the road from 55 was almost a secret. The paddock belonged to the Shire of Morwell but apart from us nobody seemed to know it was there. Did Dad pay rent for it? I don’t think so. The L-shaped block could have been our own private property for all the world cared. It was a small empty country with different types of grass, a string of tracks, a hidden creek, brown snakes and magpies. For more than ten years it was the place where we kept a cow. Clara, Gina, Velvet and Mammy. Each one came with her own looks and particular ways though there were some things about keeping a cow that were the same no matter what. Once I started milking, my fingers smelled sour all the time as if a trace of the pale liquid was going to stay with me forever to remind me that underneath everything I was a cow girl..

We milked morning and afternoon every day of the year regardless of the weather. My eldest brother and sister started off with Clara and for a few weeks the novelty made it seem like an adventure I couldn’t wait to be part of. Then I saw the truth. The cow never went away. Each morning before school someone had to go over to the paddock and find her, walk her back past the Bowling Green past Budge’s on the opposite side of the road and into the shed where the wooden bail clicked her in. Her thick hairy tail was caught on a nail on the side post and a small leg rope attached to the wall made sure the bucket was safe from a sudden stray kick. The cow needed hay to chew on and water to drink and only then was someone ready to milk her. When the milking was done whoever had brought her over had to take her back. The whole business was a two person-two times a day job.

In the very beginning the milking was done out in the open air. By the side of the bowling green in the top corner of the paddock and in full view of anyone walking or driving to work at the SEC, my sister and brother took turns milking. . It was a few weeks before Dad made a bail in the shed with a concrete slab to stand on and a wooden plank to lock in beside the cow’s head. There were gaps beneath the walls and for a long time no gate to close the shed in. On windy days it was cold, hard work..

in his image...

I notice him as he leaves the stage at the start of intermission. Tall, thin, spectacled, a halo of wiry brown curls. The cellist from the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra is the image of my late friend Robert.

For almost 20 years we wrote to each other - the correspondence beginning not long after he left Victoria to return with his wife to live in Sydney and ending with a card which he wrote from his bed in a palliative care unit two weeks before his death in September 2003.

It was, I suppose, an unusual friendship. Our connection was forged when he was far from here. My husband had begun as the correspondent and then one Christmas for reasons I cannot now remember I took over. Books, our children, teaching, writing, travelling. Over time, we became attuned to each other in ways neither of us could have expected. Perhaps it was the simple freedom that long distance friendship offered. All I knew was that a silent solidarity grew in those small tight bundles that appeared in my letter-box every few months.

He viewed the world with an exceptional intelligence and yet I sensed that because of this, found it difficult to accept that so often people behaved irrationally. He just couldn't understand why..

When he became ill we visited him in hospital. I was shocked by his appearance. He'd lost weight and had little energy to move around the ward.. He told us he'd made the decision not to pursue further treatment after the oncologist's report suggested there was no prospect of recovery.

I saw a sad dignity swimming in his eyes.

The cellist's appearance on stage the other night was extraordinary..
I could only see my friend..

that life..

The files come in an R.M.Williams bag. Six thick manilla folders crammed with letters, reports, newspaper cuttings, leaflets, photographs, speeches and a hundred other things that made up an office in Gippsland in the 50s, 60s and early 1970s. My father's working life in a brown paper bag the weight of a small suitcase.
I open it up and find that life again.

bike morning..

most Thursdays and Fridays I go for a ride around the town.. this morning there were puddles on the path..puddles?..
I pulled my phone out from my right sock-leg and took a couple of pictures..

Winter in Berwick, July..

july sunday..

out in the yard on just-cut grass
three blackbirds and a starling are skating from the shed to the clothesline

a ping of birdsong pulls me from the kitchen table
to stand in sunlight by the open door.
I stare through wire screen diamonds
and breathe in my own stillness..

they sift through cuttings, squabble, dance and -
to the windchimes' ripple underneath the eaves -
the starling wings its way to the birdbath,
dips its beak and sunlit body
into the middle of that stone waterhole,
flicks out the washing-up, then
like bells that play one note
over and over and over
those blackbirds break into song,
a one bell choir
on a winter afternoon..

night reading..

should continue the Tassie signposts but tonight i can't take my mind off the book i've just finished..

Brooklyn by Colm Toibin..

it's quietly brilliant..

tour de tassie

we've been away in Tassie..
green island dreaming.
wet gum trees,
puddles in paddocks.
long and winding roads..


from the notepad-

Nive River
Tungatina Power Station
Highland Lakes
Bronte Park
Lake Binney
Brady's Lake
Bronte Lagoon
Lake Echo
Dee Lagoon
Osterley
Laughing Jack Lagoon
Brown Marsh Creek
Clarence River
The Wall in the Wilderness
Little Naveire River
Franklin and Gordon Wild Rivers National Park
Coates Creek
King William Creek

rain glorious rain!

Mt Arrowsmith
Gifford's Creek
Surprise Valley
Squire's Creek
Taffy's Creek
Mt Gill
Franklin River
Frenchman's Cap
Stonehaven Creek
Double Barrel Creek
Donnaghy's Hill
Collingwood River (wide and flowing)
Cool Creek
Scarlett Creek
Wildlife Dusk to Dawn (warning to motorists)
pink heath

___________________________Bees_____________________________(on a bar across a road)

Cardigan Creek
Patrolman's Creek
Snake Creek
Raglan Creek
Victoria Park
road winds like green snake inside the bush
(i think of Keira Knightley's Atonement dress.. the folds of)
Nelson Creek
Nelson River
Valley Creek
steam rising off the road/



more to follow

winter magic..

and the poppies are back on the mantlepiece once again..
just lovely!

for june 22..

i do not write
i do not write
i do not write
because the time's not right..

yesterday my sister's birthday..

i tell one person at school that it is her birthday and across a crowded table at morning tea she says "treasure her memories all day.."

i do..

night..

yes yes, it's so late.. the house is still.. PC in bed.. Dan just home from a movie.. "not bad" he says then his phone rings and he's off to his room leaving me alone in the kitchen.. footy's over.. I fell asleep in middle of the third quarter.. knew the Demons had no chance of pulling the game back from such a long long way..the best part of the night had been the thin black magic man who leapt and ran and fell in front of goal and booted the ball in sideways!!!.. he made his mark and they danced in their seats, his girlfriend up on her feet and his mum and dad and grandmother sitting there in one long line of Northern Territory colour smiling and taking him in and taking it in, the whole thing in, again.
and that was it for me, I lay back in a corner of the sofa and took the evening in like that..
and now in the kitchen at the table once again and with one click I'm back on a page of poetry.. an a to z of poets to be precise..though I never am I do not think..precise.. but here it is and here I am.. Heaney in Mossbawn Sunlight, even Dahl reading Little Red Riding Hood in a way that only a sly old fox could .. and both are good.. really good..and I mark them as favourites with the orange star at the side of the screen then something makes me look again and I find the name Ciaran Carson and knowing nothing click on this and Belfast Confetti comes up and Snow and I listen in awe here in the tick tock still of a kitchen in Gippsland and know as i know my fingers are finding these letters on the keyboard.. i've found another Irish mine..

http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/trackListing.do?poetId=29

best part..

I was just watching a behind the scenes doco on the making of the movie Benjamin Button and the woman who played his mother said this-

"the best part of life is loving as much as you can while you're still living."

how good is that!

littleboywriting..

Teaching is full of marvellous moments.. take these-

by J.........
25.5.09
Today I lost my tooth. But I lost it doon the dran. I tried to get it aut but I kouldnt get it aut. I cried and cried and 2 big gols helpdt me to get it. But it was goon. Pepol said fget abot it. But I said I krnt. Pepol said Just think that you still have your tooth. So I tried and I did it. I was so prod of my saf.

1st.6.09
On Sunday I played footy. My Dad said write a letter to my sune wen he is 16 becos he will be rede to play for Carlton on tv. I love Carlton so much. I love woching Krusu on taley. I love woching Judd play and Fvola. I love Judd so much. Cats are dowing the best this yeur. If Carlton sday on the top 8 we will be in the Grand Fials.
I played footy and my dad said "you have inprovd" Footy is like the besdis thing in my liyf.

report thoughts...

For the last three weeks on my days off I've been writing reports. When I wake in the night more often than not I'm thinking of those litle kids working away at school..

In Victoria now, the report model that all schools are obliged to follow goes like this..
what the student has achieved...
areas for improvement/future learning....
what the school will do to support the student's learning.....
what you can do at home to help your child's progress...

For all the limitations there are in following a prescriptive format, in the end all I can do is try my best. One by one I go down the list.. Because I teach part-time I write 13 reports.. half the class of 27 - one of the boys is away for the term, travelling in Western Australia with his family.

Maybe it's because I've managed to finish over a week before the deadline or maybe it's the fact that somehow I've just put down what I know about each child, tonight I feel relieved. (My great fear every semester is that I won't know what to say...)

I slide the cursor up and down the screen and discover there's one more..

Frances finds it hard to run about or even hold a pencil so weak is her muscle tone.. She speaks softly too and in the busyness of the class it's extraordinarily hard to make out what she says. But I know she's happy.. the others take care of her.. pull out her chair, find her books, write letters for her, carry her lunchbox to her table. look after her on the playground.

Frances has settled into grade one very well. She has a gentle, friendly nature and is well liked by her peers. She brings out the best in everyone...


The last report I realise is a model of hope for the class..

sister on a string..

all I can say about this photograph is that there's a story attached to it.. I wish I could tell it here right now but the time's not right..
one day it will be..

once upon a winter's day..

They are working away merrily on this late April afternoon, chatting at their tables as they draw pictures about what they think life was like in the Olden Days. I go around the room seeing carts and candles, horses and campfires appearing on the page and as I pass beside the table just near my desk, one of the girls speaks.
"Nice boobs."
I stop and look at her.
"Sorry?"
"Nice boobs" she blushes. She's quiet and a little nervy and generally reluctant to speak up in front of the other children. It's only in the last couple of weeks that she's begun to come out of her shell. I lean my head towards her and cup my hand around my ear to show I don't understand. She tilts back and her eyes slide down to my legs and then I hear her. For the first time. "Nice boots" she whispers and I stare hard at the floor.
"Oh yes, they are, aren't they. Really nice boots.."

little recipe..

The first person I met when we moved into this street was a woman named Pearl. She lived next door with her husband, and not long after we arrived I saw them through the window of our sunroom sitting together on a wooden stool in the back yard. They sat close, like a couple of grey sparrows resting beneath the liquid amber tree.
Pearl introduced herself as we stood watering the front garden one morning.
I liked the light in her eyes.
A few months later her husband, Ewan had a heart attack and died. From then on Pearl lived alone. I’d hear her pottering about in the garden and if she was there while I hung out the washing, we’d talk to each other across the fence. One morning she grazed her ankle with a spade while she was digging. Later I went in to ask her to come for a drive with us – it was a hot day and we were going to the beach but she said she felt unwell and I remember seeing a pink bandaid stretched across her foot. The skin around the wound was puffed and shiny. She told me her leg felt sore and that a rest would do her good. It was the last time I spoke to her. By that afternoon her tongue had begun to swell and later the same day her daughter arrived and called for an ambulance to take her to hospital. She died a day or so later of tetany.

I never forgot her.

The morning I’d come home from hospital when Anthony was a baby she’d left a tray of lemon slices on the doorstep. The sun shone, a bird sang and Pearl produced morning tea.

She gave me the recipe for them and here it is:

Lemon Slice
½ lb Morning Coffee Bisc
3 ozs Copha
½ can Condensed Milk
½ cup icing sugar
1 cup coconut
Juice & rind 1 lemon

Method
Place ½ Bisc on a greased tin 9x9. Melt Copha, add milk, coconut, icing sugar and lemon. Mix well & pour over biscuits. Place rest of biscuits on top. When set, ice with lemon icing. Keep in fridge.

* Since Metric, the cans of Cond Milk are a little larger so barely ½ can would be sufficient. P.R.

Pearl's handwritten note is still intact though cookery books and magazines have gathered on top of it in the kitchen drawer. Her recipe endures. Old friendships are a bit like this.

20 things..

She writes a letter to me every week from the time I leave home in February 69 until she’s in her mid 80s. Macular degeneration.. Oh well, everybody’s got to get something she tells me. Her mum told her this.
Whistles to herself.
Loves the moon
Sleeps with a small black transistor under her pillow
Has an amazing memory
Tiptoes when she walks. Never gets used to walking in bare feet flat on the ground.
Wishes she’d learned to swim.
Eats slowly and not a lot.
Sits at the table with her chair half in half out
Always asks what time you left when you finally reach her door
Likes changing furniture around
Keeps up with the news
Remembers everyone’s birthdays. Sends cards with a couple of scratchies inside.
Hates losing things
Misses being able to read
Likes watching birds dipping in the birdbath outside her kitchen window
Is good to talk to on the phone
Loves music
Agrees with people
Misses my sister so much

the picture below..

Just before I went to bed last night, after I'd spent much of the day writing about travelling in Ireland with Michael and Amthony in 2005, I had the sudden thought that I should put a picture of my 5 children on this blog..

So here they are
5 works of art
5 poems if you will

Poems?
Well, about 20 years ago I heard an interview on the radio between Terry Lane and the poet Tony Lintermans and TLa asked TLi what he thought a poem was and TLi replied the brevity of passion

That struck me as a perfect way to describe a poem and, as time went along, I realized it was the best way I could describe and understand our kids..

Each one a work of art,
Each one a work in progress,
Each one a poem!

I still see them this way..

Tom, Mike, Dan, Pip, Anth
Thanks once more for your love..

5 in the hand..

summer sister..

I wake in lemon light
a cup of tea on the drawer beside my pillow,
birdsong,
the first swim of the day,
lying on cold sand listening to the sea,
lying on a straw beachmat with the smell of pressed hay coming all the way from China,
reading,
the feel of a good biro,
words spilling out of my head and onto the page,
listening to my brothers' and sisters' voices,

missing one - Michele's....

the warmth of Davey’s head as he leans against my chest,
Liz’s smile when we reach the verandah at Indented Head,
riding her old bike beside the water all the way to St Leonard’s,
flying down sand tracks and stopping off at the pier,
sifting through a carpet of shells,
finding driftwood in the shallows,
getting stuck in the supermarket at Ocean Grove and not caring- using the time to study faces and bodies and finding some bright thing in each one of them

being in the company of the clan..
how different it is without her..

NIGHT MOTHER..

THIS IS ABOUT HOW A MOTHER - ME - FEELS WHEN HER SON LEAVES HOME.. FOR THE 4TH OR 5TH TIME(?) .. HOW SAD SHE IS WHEN SHE SEES HIS ROOM ALL EMPTY OF LIFE.. SHE KNOWS SHE SHOULD NOT BE DOWN like this.. WHY IS THIS SO? HE IS A MAN AFTER ALL AND IT IS ONLY RIGHT THAT HE SHOULD LEAVE HOME.. HE MUST HE MUST.. THIS IS THE WAY LIFE GOES.. AND IN TIME..A DAY OR SO..PERHAPS A WEEK SHE WILL SEE IT SO.. BECAUSE SHE WANTS HIM WELL.. ALL WELL AGAIN.. AND HAPPY TOO.. AND LOVED AND LOVED AND LOVED.. ALL THIS GOES WITHOUT HER SAYING IT OR WRITING IT BUT STILL SHE MUST PUT DOWN WHAT SHE FEELS INSIDE TONIGHT WHEN THE LIGHT IS OFF AND THE ROOM IS QUIET...

EARLIER TODAY SHE WATCHES WHILE HE PACKS UP HIS LIFE IN BOXES AND BAGS..
A LAMP AND A MIRROR,
A DOONA, A BED,
BOOKS AND PAINTINGS,
CDS AND GUITAR,
CUTLERY CROCKERY,
COOKBOOK AND UTENSILS,
A PAPER BAG OF VITAMINS AND HERBAL MEDICINES,
A SUNHAT, A LEATHER COAT
SHIRTS ON HANGERS,
LINEN AND TOWELS..

THEN HE DRIVES TO THE CITY WITH ONE BIG DREAM..
THE DREAM IS HIS..
TO START AGAIN..
TO BE WELL ONCE MORE..



AND LIFE HAS CHANGED FOR BOTH..
AGAIN.

poem at night....

Can I share this poem with you? I'm not sure whether it's legally okay to put someone else's published work on a webpage without getting written permission first - in fact the longer this sentence goes on the surer I am that it's not. However, I hope I'm forgiven, for here it is.

Written by Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz and titled Gift.


Gift

A day so happy.
Fog lifted early, I worked in the garden.
Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers.
There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess.
I knew no one worth my envying him.
Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.
To think that once I was the same man did not embarrass me.
In my body I felt no pain.
When straightening up, I saw the blue sea and sails.



I came upon it in a poetry book a few years ago and used a letter my Dad wrote when I was overseas to mark the page.. The letter was one of the briefest Dad had sent .. 5 lines on airmail paper. He wanted me home again. Neither the poem by Milosz nor the letter from my father had any connection to the other beyond the fact that they both felt so male to me. It was as though only a man could think and write the way they did.

Throughout his life Dad was a gardener.. Fruit trees next to the chookspen, a spinning gum behind the boys' room and a tall liquid amber in the front yard that filled the kitchen window with pale yellow light each autumn..

My husband's a gardener too.. even now when the ground's as hard as concrete something in him won't give up on the idea of trying to get a few things to grow..

On Saturday he turned 60 and we had a party here at home.. The boys carried couches and chairs outside, we borrowed a small marquee and strung lights through the apricot tree. Dan ran PC's favourite music out through an open bedroom window via speakers attached to his ipod.. Nearly 60 people came. I never expected the party to happen. Two weeks ago there were fires burning all over the state. A week prior to that Jack had died. Up until Friday I couldn’t believe the night would really go ahead..

But this post is to tell you that it did.. A great party.
I read the poem too.

a February in Berwick...

I read a short story by Alex Miller the novelist some years ago -or was it an article in the paper? yes I think it was.. anyway, he wrote about his 9 year old daughter asking him how he knew where to start each time he sat down at his desk.

write the truest thing he told her.. write the truest thing..

with that in mind i'm here to say that there are two true things in my head and they've been there all week... my father in law's death and the Victorian bushfires..



Jack was due to have open-heart surgery later this month but died in hospital on Weds 4th February. He'd been admitted the day before suffering from a severe nose bleed. Peter stayed most of that night with him and though Jack was confused when he left to come home he thought that his dad would be okay. Once the bleeding had stopped, his condition was expected to stabilise and then he'd be discharged. The bigger worry Peter thought he'd have to face was in telling him he couldn't go back to his unit and would need to move into a place where he could receive nursing care. Jack was stubborn. How would he take the news? Instead as it happened there was no such conversation. His Dad's last words in the hospital that night were 'This place is a shambles" The following evening Jack died. A doctor raced into the waiting room and told Peter they'd lost his pulse. Earlier the doctor had let P know that if Jack was to have a heart attack in the hospital neither she nor the nurses would try to resuscitate him. The chances of his survival and recovery were not good. Peter called me in tears. His Dad had just gone. I took in what I could. An ending and a beginning. Dan was in his room and I told him. He was shocked but calm. Pip screamed when I rang ..really screamed and I felt as if I'd speared her. Why wasn't I crying? I was glad Chris was with her. In the background I could hear him calling out what's up? what's up? and then his voice was close and I knew he must have been holding her..After a while they hung up. Then I tried the boys. Two had their phones turned off so I left messages to ring me..urgently. I didn't want anyone to hear the news second-hand. Their responses when I did tell them were somehow the same. Shock followed by a sad kind of realism. He'd made it to 91. Dan and I drove to the hospital together. Miles Davis played in the background. By the time we arrived in casualty it was after 9. Jack had passed away at 7. We met Peter in the chapel on the ground floor- "you won't want to see Dad, he looks terrible.." But I did want to see him.. I needed to say goodbye..
Noone about in the corridors -cold glass, plaster-grey walls and dry rustred paint-drops on the vinyl floor leading into the ward.
A young nurse with love in her eyes showed me to where he was.
In a corner of the 4-bed room, curtains drawn and in the semi-dark Jack lay waiting. A woman in the opposite bed moaned. Wrapped tightly in the sheets, Jack looked like an old athlete. A runner who'd just finished a race. Straining forwards off the pillow, eyes closed, chin taut, bristles on his cheeks. He'd made it to the finishing line using all the energy he had. A whole life's run. In his nose the tubes and cotton wool they'd used to stop the bleeding. Uncomfortable, invasive. He'd have suffered a kind of hell in those last hours. I kissed him on the forehead and told him I loved him for that. Some awful nobility in it. I said I knew he loved us too, that he loved me although it wasn't easy for him to say those words to anyone.. For some reason he just couldn't. Then I kissed him again and said thanks for everything.. He'd done his best. His forehead was cold and dry, skin pulled tight like a leather ball. I wished him well. It felt as if his spirit had gone from his body but I thought it could not have gone far. Was he there in the room listening to me? I hoped he was. I was talking to him as if he could hear my words, read my thoughts. I kissed him again. Three kisses, three goodbyes, three regrets...
At times you were mean and grumpy and you wanted so much attention.. too much .. i couldn't give you what you expected.. It didn't seem fair

Did I think this then or is it just now, 10 days later that I'm releasing the old thoughts? The funeral over - it went so well. Not one word was spoken that could have stung the air. Not a word.

Everyone loved him.. what a great man!

I loved his wife -who loved him-and I know that's how I reached him best.


And the other part of the week-two weeks in fact- has been the bushfires.

.. On the news, in the paper and here in my head.. On Saturday 7th February we were in the lounge sifting through a suitcase of Jack's photos, looking for ones that could be used in the funeral booklet. The air con in the corner was blowing over our heads like a sea breeze whilst outside it was 47 degrees, the hottest temperature ever recorded in the state. Less than a 30 minute drive away a bushfire was racing through the Bunyip forest and towards towns nearby. Labertouche, Drouin west, Neerim south. All towns of my childhood . These were the places where dad so often went, visiting farmers and drumming up support for the National Civic Council. Last Saturday those places were going up in smoke. Not only there but elsewhere in Gippsland the bush was burning.. near my brother Paul's home in Churchill -he was standing at his back door, watching the sky when I spoke to him early in the morning and sounded so edgy, a tremor in his voice. "I have friends in Boolarra"..he said "it's seriously worrying..
And on it went.. we kept the radio with us.. 774 had become a lifeline to people everywhere.. The fires were blazing all over the state..I carried the tranny from room to room with me.. Somehow I had to share some of their fear..
Saturday evening Feb 14th was the first time they stopped the bushfire info line and went back for a little while to something remotely like normal programmes.. In this case a soccer semi-final followed by an old BBC comedy show from the 50s or 60s..Just a minute.. Was this to take everyone's minds away from the terror of the fires..the constancy of fear?..

It's relentless.. the smoke smell overnight and in through the doors early this morning, the pierce of the sirens as fire engines from the depot by the railway station a couple of streets away go out again and again..
Where are they going?
will they be safe?
When will it end?

I should be doing something.. not just the money or the clothes..and not just writing.. something actual and practical.. a very real kindness for very real people..
what?

on the way once again.

An hour after posting the last piece on this screen, Anthony drops a couple of typed sheets on the kitchen table and asks me to interview him. For a job. A Mission Australa position working with African youth in Dandenong. Part-time -19 hours a week - helping refugeees to get involved in sport in the local area. He's made up a mock interview for himself using questions that I presume he's found on the internet. A dry run to help prepare him for the real experience on Tuesday afternoon.

My 29 year old son has had chronic fatigue for around 5 years. For the last 12 months he's been on health benefits, living back home, resting and taking care of himself and has gradually come good again.

I am reading an old interview between John Updike and Martin Amis on a website when Anthony gives me the list of possible questions and his answers to these then he goes off to his room to get something, which I twig is to give me a chance to read over his notes. Minutes later he's back again, smiling and ready to go.

I have not looked at the notes.


So why do you want the job I ask and as I say this I realize I have to be absolutely serious with him. I lose my smile .. My voice sounds plain but strong.

Anthony looks straight at me. I like working with people he says. I know how important sport can be -particularly for youth and I know how to organize things...I'd like to have the opportunity to help others if I can..

And this is how it goes.. as much as I remember what answers he gives me in the interview, -I don't actually remember much of what he says- the thing that stays with me more is the whole way he approaches each question.. the openness of his face, the clear eyed look he gives me, the way he stops talking and sits for a moment to think of what he's saying. the honesty of his replies . how direct he is when he speaks. the way when I ask so what do you find difficult when you're working? and he says that he's learned that if he puts in too much of himself it isn't good. That he understands the importance of keeping a balance between work and a private life.. How he believes this job will allow him to find that balance.. and that one day a week he'll get work washing dishes, something unskilled.. which he's sure won't be too hard to find.

I flick through the answers he's written on the sheets and tell him we've covered everything.. I say if it were me I'd give him the job ..and he smiles and pushes his chair back.

The afternoon goes on. I sit at the table with a cup of tea and listen to a bird chipping an end of day call on the lawn out the back.. The fan above me whirs away as it has for most of the weekend.. All I know is that this is the antidote to the reality of that last piece of writing..

The balance is back.

too real..

In Victoria we've been in the middle of an extraordinary heat wave.. For more than a week the house has felt as though a thick block of material has been pushed in through the windows and doors and is now stuck there.. It reached 45 this afternoon-113 in the old scale-following a week of 43s and 44- and now there's a bit of north wind to ramp things up even more.. The past few nights I've slept in the lounge with the air con on ..Alone.. The sofabed too narrow, the mattress springs too uncomfortable for two bodies to plot a path to sleep through...My husband prefers to lie directly under the ceiling fan in our bedroom.. Last night I woke at one stage and clutched the bottle of water beside me and thought of the daphne in the pot on the front porch.. During the day it had wilted to the point that like the dead parrot sketch it was a plant no longer. I got up and dosed it with a jug of water from the kitchen..

Elsewhere there's a lot going on..The train systems's up the spout, tracks have buckled like cheap plastic rulers in the heat..Electricity supplies have been on stop-start mode in many parts of the city..and there are bushrires-deliberately lit- on farmland at the edge of my old home town

But this news is not the worst..

On Thursday morning just before 9 am while driving his kids to school across the Westgate , the bridge that links Melbourne's east and west, a man who'd apparently agreed a day earlier to shared custody arrangements for his three children, stopped his car, opened the back door, lifted his 4 year old daughter out of her seat, carried her to the edge of the roadway then dropped her over the side into the water below.. Just like that..

brand new day..

what a morning!
we wake at 3 and are in the lounge room by 10 past. I pull out the sofa bed, toss on as many cushions and pillows that I can find, haul out the spare doona while keeping my eyes on the screen.



OBAMA OBAMA OBAMA

the time has finally come..
steady, strong, sure..

and in the words of that glorious poem-
In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp -- praise song for walking forward in that light.


Amen
Alleluia
Amen