Scattered past

Grateful for delicious cake
Left over from celebrations
Side glance conversations
Walking past to other table destinations

Qualifications on displays
Of generous affection
Home made, ends of yarning
Only small price to pay

Tid bits of life history
Scattered on forest path
Leading to bare timber hut
Alpine hills, no wood heater

Scaling walls with hand sized holds
Cold and rough chalk grip
Overhang semicolon coming
The weight of it

Slimming, championing own cause
Slough off personal flaws
Penning my life's work
To scatter into the silence

So it is to love the unknown
Grown accustomed
Sparse reply a gentle sword
To hang on her every word

To the wire

Speaking sense to reason
A hard task to undertake
Especially when reason
Gives silent treatment

Only the echo of sentiment
Reverberates tentative
Across noughts and ones
Dots, pixels all night long

What is not relayed at all
The way I kiss the skin
Of cold bitten cheek
Sitting at the lights

Or how I warm your couch
Create a new world
Birthed by the moment
You gave me a glass of wine

Whole lives untranspired
Waking dreams, night sweats
Terrified of what belies
If they never happen
Hobart Penitentiary Clock Tower c1834

Trying

Do not try,
Pipes chorus -
To compete,
It’s not a game,
Chides a waiter -
With the apple
Of her eye.
Devotion decades deep
While you are merely
A drop in her sea.
Constant, awash
A reed among kelp forest
Slowly disappearing
Taste of salt tears
Sweat of remembrance
Incomparable to the love
She plucked from tender
Young tree
View to Adventure Bay, Bruny Island Tasmania

Incantations

Behind soft closed eyes
Resigned
Lights out
Play the reel again
Click switch
Tick of film
Coursing through
Ferris wheel of time
Bulb warms soft
Against the greyness
Dust smokes away

Again
In the park
Walking along chatting
With a friend
Observing absences
Post pandemic life
Look up
She materialises -
Wishes surprise
Creases in face
melt away
Helium smiles
lift the sky

Her eyes dart
Concerned for friend
I say nothing
Pretend
But quip on the cans
In their hand
Flashback to teen girl
Sitting on the Datto
With treasured women
The pictures she used to send melt my heart over again

Jealous I am
She laughs and introduces
The dog but not friend
An afterthought
Living happily ever after
Cranial incantations
I do not write
But summons memories
To illuminate life, again
Scotch Thistle by the Rivulet, Lenah Valley Tasmania

Love that keeps you warm

Desire as the heat emanating 
From the gas stove lit - extinguished
Once realised
One can build a fire - with what?

Outside these walls' shapely diameter
Of forest elders
Glacial remains confound me
Monuments to time gone by

Tears of loss and such colder
Forming peaks and troughs
Boulders of thought crushed
Weight of centuries soft snowfall

To walk together amongst it
Not for faint hearted
Tenacity, grit resilience
Packed duvet downy feathers

Love is love is all
Lake Osborne to Hartz Mountain, Tasmania

Winter arrives

Winter arrives slowly
A knock on the door
One morning
Lover calling you
Back to bed
Mid June promises
Teasing along
Since they escaped
To furthest parts
Of the landscape
All summer long
Nothing to do
But wait for frost
First signs of
Pink frosted dawn
Hope she will come again
Alone
King Billy Pine at Lake Osborne, Hartz Mountain, Tasmania