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About aperture

Living on the island state of Tasmania, Australia. Narrating life through poetry and photography.

To the Beatnik

Spending time telling, feeling
In case the world falls in
Taking words to treasure them
No worry or fear
No words misplaced
An idea, an embryo
Born into the light
Fell from lips
At an opportune time

For the longest time
Lived under a cloud
Knowing who I am
Knowing all you are

I dared not come
Stopped short of words
The face, the smile
The way you made cake and ate
The way you held your guitar, don't weep

Only pictures in the mind
Nothing gained or lost
Now the sky is clear
And the rain falls soft
It's time to grow wild
No effort to declare
Yes I do.

‘I look at you all
See the lover that’s sleeping’ – John, Paul, George & Ringo.

Of Scales and Wings

We are all enamoured
By your grace and beauty
A symphony of life
Resting in plain sight

A kaleidoscope of colour
Infused in delicate wings
Spreading life and love
Reflecting light from above

What a cruel casualty
Of human curiosity
To capture, to collect
To bruise within a net

Such trickery denies us
A glimpse of your glory
In full flight of freedom
Unfolding your own story

The torment of lepidoptery
To love but not possess
To observe discreetly, amiss
Proclaim your beauty but resist...

Once upon a lifetime
A love hard fought and won
Is touched lightly by someone
Captured in memorium

Love’s Wake

Let love be a contagion
To bounce from eye to eye
To linger on lips long enough
To lift a wounded pride
Boundless and imagined
It roams so fancy free
While days and nights and limbs
Are lived in sound reality
So gentle are the feathers
Plucked for sense and reason's sake
We dive into our future, chill
Tread gently in love's wake

Looking into you

Image

Look into my face, can you see?

The sketches of my past

smiles and frowns etched with age

marks of honor, sun-baked.

Look into my eyes, can you see?

A reflection of yourself?

Glinting shadows sparkle and fade

To soften the hard edge life of late

Read between the lines of living

on the cusp of heaven, grow wings.

Ease, peace, please, appease.

Muster courage, move to light

Hand holding tight.

Look into my face, can you see

You?


Photo credit: Swiss Alps by Ilze Haynes (C) 2019

The Place of Repose

The feathered bird flips lightly on the low bough and peers

Suspiciously at fronds of smoke waving past his ears

Roundly Red and pale Peach bellies, proudly hide and seek

Circling hoard of humans who visit once a week

Curiously they walk below, felling trunks, digging peat

Bouncing round the fire waving sticks with things to eat

Harmlessly they shape our wood into a tiny home

A private nest, motionless, watching while Red roams.

Remember Me

Remember me, when words fail,

when my face softens, hair and skin fade 

Remember me, when memories are gone,

hold them in your own mind and sing my life to me, joyfully.

Remember me, all trials and sufferings, victories and festivals,

labours and laughter, my lessons hard-won – are yours now,

to remember me.

 

Image source

Words of Wonder

Wonder why

These words of time

Enfolded, embossed in memory cite

Are staved in silence – what else can we say?

New ways to sing no words replace

Hold strong to the ledge

Solid timbre

Huon pine engraved with scars of age

Lashings of yard lines measured secure

To the shore

Though storms berate

Seasons rust and fade

How long? Till the lines fray.

Before bushfire devours what is ours

Let us launch and collect the tattered sails

Set free on open seas

Where words are swept away on wind ‘n tide has final say

Until the moon is no more

We will float above the whitewash

And long for safe harbour no more.

To wonder where?

Grow Big

Lying motionless for weeks

Eyes tracing fleur de lis

The peeling paper of grief

Lit by dappled window

 

We hauled ourselves o’er river

Up valley, down street

A fortress of relief

Where the sun streams in

 

Letterbox dropped all over

Exhaustive help depletes

Children playing down the creek

Treated from top to feet

 

The wardrobe grew expansive

The widening face to greet

In the mirror of my memory

My morning stranger meet

 

A thickening of walls and doors

A latch that won’t fool many

The welcome mat rolled up and out

For neighbours warm and friendly

 

The distance and the silence grew

A universe between them

Majestic prose still flows in space

Though gracious few receive it

 

The stranger in the mirror

Grows accustomed to the stare

Our eyes meet and smile

A sweet surrendered air

 

Hiding in plain sight

My former figure forgets

Politely nod and carry along

The new friend in our midst

 

New and aged silver and brave

Though some might say contrary

The glimmer in her eye reveals

The joy in giving Glory


Featured Image: Photo by Hello I’m Nik on Unsplash

Giving Plea

We may lay and rise to meet

Expel desire to compete

Friends and strangers’ hearth for feet

Tread the path discreet

 

Fruit borne plentiful and sweet

Eyes of silence wide asleep

Pierce the mocking vine deceit

Thistle blister seat

 

Longing not for pride or place

Passion forbade saving face

Hope in holy open space

Gentle saving grace

 

hobart ruins

 

Poem and Featured Image of Ellendale, Tasmania by Lisa J. Haynes (C) 2018

Image of ruins near Ross, Tasmania – Mercury Newspaper.

The Deep

Even deep disappointments cannot be drowned;

They will rise and inflate and infect and abound.

Happy are those who suffer no ill;

For all the rest, choose – sweet or bitter pill?


 

the deep ice

Photo credit: Chip Phillips image from an article: ‘The Explosive potential of methane frozen beneath Abraham Lake’ (Canada)