Love like

Haymaking
Sunshine and rain
Brave one who
Hops onboard
Riding forward
While others gather
Receiving stores
Bailing and loading
Sundried piled high
Wheat and straw
For each living thing
In community
Out of rain
Hoping greenness
Had gone away
Save spontaneous
Combustion

Meanwhile few
Content with
Love's gleanings
Slim pickings
On the fringe
Taking only
What they need
To feed or bake
Wheaten loaf
For family roast
Horse or goat
Stave off hunger
Together
For one more day
The Gleaners by Jean-Francois Millet

Sister smiles

Failsafe friend days
Filled with laughter
Topdown wind in hair ways
Hope your headscarf stays

The biggest smiles
Reserved for little
Sister dearest
Keepsafe creative memory

Easy hair down
Help tailor made
In a bind
Pave a way

Waves over statelines
Saving grace
Voice a soothing space
For centuries

Women on the verge
Of finding one another
Peace never needing
A reason to love
Peppermint Bay, Woodbridge Tasmania

Pleiades

Dancers in dusky streetlight
Seven forms converge
Reflecting blue
Evading the darkness

Superceded by
Spectacular collisions
Supernova sky

In the millions
Years of stillness
Like one looked
In the mirror

Saw the other
Longing to look within
Each other
Forever

Live like
No tomorrow
Casting stars
Into orbit
For a hundred thousand
Tomorrows

Light years end
Replaced by dark nebula
Crash course time and again
Pressing upon the moment
Tales trail behind

A particle of dust
Floats by
Miniature universe
Beyond our eyes

Little did she know

The tragedy of poetry
Is how Atwood sees
As the words are written
Inspired event complete

Like an epitaph
To memory in bold
Detail delightful sighting
Though future is untold

No assurance can be given
By simply putting down
Ink to paper, finger tap
All prophecy unfounded

Into future like Le Guin
A new world expounded
If all society's whisper
In amplified stereo sound

A foot tapping, toe curling
Secret I keep
That all stories begin and end
With us somewhere in between
Eucalyptus globulus, Tasmanian blue gum

Silver fox

Grey lady hanging on
To the edge
Overlooking harbour view
Slender and proud

Twisting round to glimpse
Decades of bobbing heads
Like buoys on waves
Coming in shivering

Brave showing her age
Engraved beauty
Limbs reach out
Welcome stranded men

Come warm yourself
On the rocky shores
Casting a shadow
To danger marker

Pointing windeward
Shaped by her forces
Invisibly caressing
To bow and bend

Blitz

Keeping you at arms length
While holding on to life
Silence so you'll never hear
The danger and the strife

One day V day will arrive
And in your arms I'd fall
To stand on every corner
Friends and family and all

When sheltered under door frame
To avoid roof falling in
Imagining a life with you
A fantasy we're in

Like stepping through a cupboard
Into frozen landscape bare
Meeting little furry friends
Sweet treats if you dare

The realm of fiction is complete
With swords and battles too
But surely it's the safest way
That I can be with you?

Love parade

Darkness lifts like a curtain
Raised to the rooftop
Of palladium
A stage

Dancers, jugglers, seers and wanderers
Mill around in their thousands
Wondering who will speak
On that day

Mumbling and speculation
Fill the open sky with heat
Distress and devastation
Trampled under feet

No authoritative voice resounds
The cacophany dies to a whisper
The only words recited 'tween
The lover and the listener

Mind matters

I wish to be your human
And you could be mine
-My feline friend says proudly-
I hope you don't mind

Such bravery to crawl on me
And underneath the covers
To twirl between my legs
Kiss my nose like I'm his mother

Such boldness is endearing
For what else really matters
Than telling your favourite human
That their absence leaves you scattered

To be near you every day
Or even once a week
Would make all of the difference
To the life I'd wish to lead

To be with you and drink
In the regular everyday
When I run out of words
And hear all you have to say

But dare I say I am
With you always anyway
Only river between
Not an ocean or a fray

- Rest assured I'd gladly swim
The distance any day -

Can you believe my thoughts
Are often interrupted
By the time you liked my shirt
Or by a joke, at me, directed

The time you sat beside me
Every word believed as true
Reciting leaves and lemon trees
Realised was all for you

Painting of a picture
With those stories far and wild
Imagine all those places
From your thoughts to ease my mind

A literary meeting
Like some tower here in Oz
Where heart, soul and mind
Find out they were there
All along

Super Flower Blood Moon Eclipse

Pulling me in closely 
Like moon and tide
Always the atmosphere
Between us

Watching waves coarsing
Supposedly on their own
Nothing to do with
The bright light of the moon

Turning dark one night
Super Flower Blood Moon's
Power over me, pulling
Closer every night

Long distance drawing in
Accidents and happenstance
Near misses and stresses
How did I get here?

Land eventually
Wondering if I make it
Through to you
Never leaving

Moon and tide dance
Back and forth
Two great forces
Land on her shores?

Eternally beholden
One to another
Moon starved of water
Tide drawing closer

Sea rises to meet
Rings round mist
Kisses moon light
Returns to earth beneath