Parachuting
Looking at the items written, on my long bucket list,
parachuting was still there, something, so far, I’d missed.
My birthdays had been piling up so if that wasn’t done post haste
the chances were it never would and that struck me as a waste.
So I organised a tandem jump - with a young lady I’d long known,
’cos if I was gonna die at this then I’d not do so all alone.
Well, we were at two thousand feet above the
safe and solid ground with heart thumping wildly,
I was sure all could hear the sound, when we left that
nice safe aeroplane, stepping into empty space,
hoping no-one else could see the terror written on my face.
But gracefully we seemed to hang suspended
as on silken strings, unaware that we were
plummeting, we soared on unseen wings.
Then savagely the harness, strapped tightly
through my crutch, was pulled up hard with such a jolt
which I didn’t like that much. Above us stretched our canopy,
guided by the lady at my back to steer us to a landing
site and not atop some tree or shack.
The ground was rushing up at me and terror flooded
back once more till CRASH!
As I and blankets rolled out of bed and hit the floor.
© Pete Stratford
A Man With Good Manners
I want a man with good manners
A man who will open the door for me,
Someone who won't swear at me;
A man who will take me out to tea
and treat me like a lady;
A man who will remember my birthday
and treat me in a gentlemanly way;
with respect and kindness.
If such a man is out there who happens to be free:
I hope that he will soon find me!
© Cathy Weaver
Memories
A summer’s day beneath the trees
The songs of birds, the buzz of bees
The whispering wind, the rippling stream
Bring childhood memories like a dream.
Another place another day
Memories of new mown hay
The soft caress of gentle rain
The memories take me back again.
It wasn’t always milk and honey
Some days were dark and not so sunny
But memories fade if causing pain
Those days of drought or flooding rain
Happy thoughts linger on
And times of stress are sooner gone
But what I’ve seen in all my years
Is pain and happiness both bring tears
The tears of pain soon melt away
While tears of joy are here to stay
When years advance and joints give pain
Let memories take you back again.
The days at play come back to me
The children sitting by my knee
The friends long past live here with me
They’re all a part of memory.
© Charlie Trafford
Female Cycle
A small haggard bird looks into a mirror
Where she sees not the neatness of youth
But battered feathers for she toils all day
To make the nest warm and a showpiece
for her man.
Yet at sunrise not a peck does she receive
As her man is anxious to fly out of their cage:
Into the world of flirts and chirps, where
Birds have unruffled feathers,
Not contaminated with domesticity.
The outside birds, all groomed and perfumed,
Feel sorry that he has a haggard, unmelodious wife.
Whilst the haggard one is preparing his nest,
He goes willingly with the youthful chirps to
Enjoy bodily lusts.
And then later, when he returns to the nest,
He is repulsed by his bird in the cage,
For she is a useless, youth-less, haggard wife.
No more can he stand her tattered feathers
He screeches, ”Out you go!”
Out she flies with no redundancy,
As into the nest, to recapture his youth,
He brings a perfumed, melodious bird.
But it is not long, like the bird before her,
She has tattered feathers and she knows
He is out there with birds who don’t smell of toil
But are well plumed and perfumed.
© Judy Brumby-Lake
Winter Morn
Morning sunbeam on the wall
sheds a light, I watch
through near-closed eyes
Psychedelic images evolve
through flickering lashes.
A sea anemone, skeletal form
dances playfully, suspended
in air that once was invisible
Crystallised strobes of light
Immobile, yet pulsing with energy.
Wispy spider legs bend and flex
A coil of sinew ablaze
shedding particles of ash
Tissue-thin membranes blowing in the breeze
A hint of saffron melts the icy glacier.
© Helen Eaves
The Tunnel
For some, the way is straight,
With golden glow awaiting at the end
And accolades for an easy transition -
For others, obstacles only spur them on
To greater success -
The hurdlers and marathon runners of this world.
For others still, the way is twisted and narrow,
With no way out -
Never-ending pain and chaos
Blocking the way of happiness -
The prize at the end - darkness
And a blue ribbon for despair.
If all men are said to be equal,
Why then can’t peace, prosperity
and happiness be evenly distributed?
Such is the way - of the tunnel of life.
© June Maureen Hitchcock, July 2013
The House I Loved
It was sited on a grassy hill.
Dad and Mum owned 320 acres of ground.
The house was old, so Dad built a new home.
This medium-sized house was our security from the winds of life.
At the back of the new house, Dad planted many fruit trees.
We were not rich in material things but the house Dad built was our castle.
We moved later in life to a large house but it wasn’t the same.
The memory of the house Dad built was always in my mind.
People may win Tattslotto but it doesn’t always bring happiness.
Shelter of love, food cooked with love and
the clothes my mother sewed on her small sewing machine, that was love.
The house Dad built could tell many stories.
Enough money to pay the necessities of life is what humans need.
Memory of the house built is always real.
It was situated on a high green hill.
Mum planted a flower garden – so beautiful.
© Yvonne Matheson
He asked her out for morning coffee. Well, no harm in that, so she accepted and nothing dangerous happened!
Then lunch? She hesitated before saying yes – that would be nice, nothing to risk!
How about an after-work drink? A wine? Or just coffee again? She pondered this and said she would “get back” to him. She did – and said that would be okay but she couldn’t stop too long.
So far so good. Pleasant conversation. Generally, not bad company. Safe! Yes, safe but not as a bank because banks these days are not all that safe!
What next? Well, you know what next! The Big Question!
How about dinner?
OMG, not dinner! Not dinner! Danger zone. Stranger danger, though he wasn’t a stranger, of course. But still in uncharted waters.
Morning coffee leaves the out for going home or going to work. Lunch also leaves the out, children to pick up from somewhere, or back to work. After-work drink still secure because have to get home, pick up the children (again!), get a meal ready etc etc.
Dinner? Dinner could mean a dalliance at the front door later on at night after a silver-service meal or the scariest thing of all – breakfast! No! Dinner is high risk! Dinner could mean dangerous liaisons – and the terrible aftermath!
No wine and dine, thank you very much!
Coffee sounds fine, though – one day!
Stretch
Upon a straw against the wind,
Fickle down upon summer breeze,
The wind and the breeze,
The straw upon the down,
Straw clutched,
Down cradles,
Straw falls upon the fall,
The down is chirlish,
Straw defines desperation,
Down floats, flutters,
Straw whipped, angry water,
Down in quiet air,
Straw submurges, drowns,
Stretch!
Down considers sunset,
Straw crumples in death,
Down is false salvation,
Straw against the wind
and the tugging current.
© Michael Garrad July 2013
Money Talks
The Media Barons have the say
on all the news we read today,
or all the items we may see
on Foxtel, iPad or TV,
and pressurize behind the scenes
the editors of magazines;
or may suppress new information
about the true state of the nation;
and they can make or break a man
and buy a poli-ti-cian,
persuading him to make a switch
to bend the rules to suit the rich.
They care not how a poor man lives,
for they’ve the power that money gives.
© Mary Kille
Poetry
Your rhythmic language is irrational,
Where images create a dream’s appeal
As sharp ironic, allegorical
To hypnotise the mind, to make us feel. 4
This rhyming, magic music, makes us sing,
As psychic and delusional as dreams.
As dinosaurs we soar with lifting wings
And so avoid the darkness of our schemes. 8
We often use blunt irony to hide
That which is much too painful to be spilled,
Where we use rhymes and meter to abide
The magic touch of God that must be willed. 12
Most concern the colour of emotion,
Which requires humble, soft devotion.
© Joe Lake
Money Talks
The Mining Giants ride rough-shod
o’er all objectors, playing God,
denying the First People rights,
and desecrating sacred sites
and places of outstanding beauty,
as they declare it is their duty
to mine the minerals and coal
by digging an enormous hole,
regardless of the foul pollution.
Protesters say the true solution
to save the planet as they ought
is conservation; but in Court:
“Objections overruled”; so work begins,
the Mining Giants’ money wins.
© Mary Kille
Fear Of Darkness A serial novel by Joe Lake.
(So far: Julie meets Susan, who is from five hundred years in the future. She gives Julie a ring to travel in different parallel universes. Julie turns the ring and journeys through space and time with John, her husband. Susan appears later as a hologram and tells Julie not to use the ring anymore. Julie taunts the hologram to look like Lady Di and it does. Julie wants to be left alone. The hologram says that it wants the ring back, then it disappears.)
“Susan is bad,” said John.
Julie shook her head, “I’ve seen you stare at her breasts. You’d like to marry her, wouldn’t you?”
“No, I mean, yes. I don’t know what you are on about. She exists only as a hologram, or ghost as some people call it,” said John.
“I’d like to get away from Cooee because women know how to trap a man and she’d like to marry you and turn me into a hologram.”
John shook his finger at her. “She said that she could clone us and that means that these others of us wouldn’t be us.
“You should have stood up to her when we first saw her and she gave us the ring.
“I didn’t know that she was up to no good, how could I?”
“We should have gone to the police,” said Julie.
“They don’t know how to deal with apparitions from a parallel universe,” said John.
“Neither do you,” said Julie.
“I think we should throw the ring into the ocean, as she suggested,” said John.
“I tried, it won’t come off and I’m afraid to turn it downwards, as some crazy things happen to us whenever I do.”
They were sitting in their Winnebago at Cooee beach as they watched the sun go down over Somerset.
“With all this nonsense, we’ve lost our privacy. They must be watching us twenty-four hours a day,” said John.
“Why are we being persecuted?” asked Julie.
“Maybe we are being punished,” said John.
“You should have left the ring on the beach where we found it,” said Julie.
“You should never have put it on,” said John, “or we could have melted it or cut it into pieces or smashed the centre of it.
John looked into Julie’s eyes, then took her hand in his with his left and with his right, he took hold of the ring and slowly turned it downwards.
The van began to shake violently. Susan pulled her hand away as a gust of wind shook the van.
(To be continued next month)
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