MEKONG

It was the colour of the earth —

Clay to be specific —

Not at all like the rivers of home

On their run down to the Pacific —

Except when they’re in horrid flood

And spoiled with cruelty and mud.

On the Thai side was Gotoma,

Statuesque, all gold and ethereal.

Across in Laos was another world —

Sky-scraping palaces of the material.

A shard of green wilderness

Splintered out of Myanmar,

As if the land itself sought to escape

But was blocked, unable to get too far.

From the embankment on Thailand’s shore,

I watched the long tail boats propel,

While I thought of days of purple haze and fiery hell,

When this dragon, this mother water, was poisoned by war.

THE END OF SCHOOL

Was it really fifty-two years ago?

It was a morning so balmy

That we dressed for endless summer.

In our warmth, we celebrated like a conquering army.

The future we foresaw was a jolly jumble —

One part projections out of a bleary past,

One part prophecies inspired by hope —

A vision that was only a rough forecast.

That distant day was over and gone

Well before we had time to think

About the betrayals and failures

Lurking behind the next blink.

For a moment we were young and beautiful

And beyond the reach of ugly blame

For mistakes awaiting us in a broken world.

It was later that we learned to look back in shame.

WAT PHRA THAT DOI KHAM

From the ring-roads it was invisible,

Lost in Chiang Mai’s monsoonal green

In a season that flattered the hills

And made them seem pristine.

Suddenly we saw more than steep bluffs —

The cliff was ablaze with strafes of light,

As if flames were scorching the tree tops,

And distant gold plate seemed set to ignite.

We stopped to buy white garlands

From vendors waiting in the shade,

Before the road hair-pin-bended

Its way to the heart of a sacred glade.

The place was the home of dragons rampant and snakes

Coiled before a reclining idol — a countenance so serene

That I almost understood the pilgrims’ trust

In merit gleaned from offerings seen and faith unseen.

THE BRIDGE

All that remains is a memory of a bridge,

Spanning a river that, in its prehistory,

Churned through cliff-sided valleys

And then flooded ample plains, now stretched out

Beside rolling hills, now backdropped by blue mountains,

And left the clammy slime crammed with cradles of life.

When the ‘Oxbra’ was first named and tamed

The colony was fed and the famine was finished.

Forsaken refugees, sent to a land they did not know

By governments that, it must be said,

Would surely have preferred them dead,

Turned the lowlands into fields of fruitful triumphs —

Hard labour of outcasts,

Their sullied hearts washed clean on the muddy river flats.

New wealth mustered free men,

Keen to make super-profits from the land —

A certainty once the early work was done.

First nations were vanquished,

Convict settlers’ farms were looted,

As the shrines of capital were built

By the raiders and the traders,

The merchants and their confidants —

Men unaware of their own guilt,

Indemnified against risk and chance.

If you go there you can watch the pageants —

New generations stroll on mean pavements

Laid recklessly along the falsified embankments,

Unwittingly untutored by tangible remembrance.

If we, who will soon be out of time,

Try to tell them about a lawful crime —

A monument’s misappropriation —

Will they will hear a memory of a bridge?

The photograph was taken by Paul Caleo and published on Facebook in 2021.  It shows the old Windsor bridge in the final stages of its demolition.

PARADISE

“And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.”  (Luke 23 : 43 KJV) 

There is no garden scenery —

No trees with their dangling greenery

Arrayed around still waters and a silver stream.

No sun sparkles like a yellow lantern

And the moon and the stars do not gleam.

There is, in fact, nothing we could realise

And nothing our minds might recognise.

For, in the simplicity of eternity,

What sustains us other than Him?

Have you not seen?

Have you not heard?

When we are empty,

So we are nothing

And we possess nothing,

Then we can rest in Him.

TODAY'S NEWS

Where will we go after the rain?

Will we have strength enough to remain

Here on a grisly shore that pulses with pain

As storm surf spits waste on a plagued coastal plain?

Where will we go after the drought?

Will we again know what trust was about?

Can we ever rebuild the faith we outgrew;

Or will we be refilled by pride in our virtue?

Another war rages across bleeding stages

Described in pages copied from dark ages.

The rich count money bequeathed in belief

Support can be bought and funded by grief.

Useful idiots holler so loudly that all must hear;

But no one listens and fewer understand.

Profanity so grand emits visions and glistens;

But no one sees and fewer perceive.

MY LA NIÑA SUMMER

The sky is always grey,

Pallid, like ashes.

It’s just another day

Of this, my La Niña summer.

And the rain on the roof

Patters, it seems, as chary proof

Of an untested chapter of truth.

No one really cares

About faraway floods

And their remote victims —

They are, they say, mere symptoms.

And, yet, I could relish the rain —
The sumptuous sound of it

On my corrugated canopy;

But, I cannot.

For my life is a despised irrelevance.

So I can only lament

The demise of my culture

And the desert of hostility

That burgeons all around me

In this, my La Niña summer.

The photograph of the 1961 Hawkesbury flood
is part of the Riverstone Historical Society's collection.

REVIVIFICATION

When I saw the shadow of death
I had not realised I was in a valley.
Yet all around me were savage mountains
And a river of curses coursed the lowest plain.

But, I hear you say, valleys teem with life,
While mountains are soaring wonders
From which the rains run down
To fill rivers with bounty.

All that you say, I know.
So a menacing shadow did not scare me.
Instead I was afraid of what would survive
What was required to keep me alive.

ARCADIA

Uncomplicated childhood games,
Climbing the mulberry tree on summer days,
Reaching the ripest fruit,
Careless consumption — the crimson juice
Staining bare arms and dripping
On to shirts and dresses.

Fibro and weatherboard houses —
Proud behind picket fences and flaking paint —
Fronted a dusty road
With edges of powdered clay
Bordering a grassy strip
Dotted with clover, paspalum,
Dandelions and daisies.
We shaped miniature highways in the dirt,
Racing our replica cars
And arguing which was the fastest.
Sometimes the girls would make mud pies
And offer murky water from plastic teapots.

BACKGAMMON

Here are the dregs of summer days
Locked away like solitaire,
Euchre, chess, and backgammon,
In a mind
That’s trying to recall
The bluff of someone blind.

Walking, writing, reading, strumming —
All the windows' strobing lights
Irradiate the crisis coming
And set us all up in their sights.

Sunsets run away in glum greys
Rendered clear by humid air,
Water colours drip on architraves
Of true views
That appeal to us
To turn off the lying TV news.

Trending, surging, bursting, swelling —
All the numbers make a wave
That never crashes, all impelling
Like a madcap’s laughing rave.

And when did the dream go up in smoke?
And why didn’t I get the joke?

(With acknowledgements to the music and lyrics of Syd Barrett)