Category Archives: Nature

How do I know?

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We all cried out
With our spiral perms
Bouncing in disco blue light

How I know?..
Walking longing on leash
Through swathes of native grassland
Hoping against all hope
To find a glimmer of flower
More delicious than weed

Rolling in bed with heartburn 
Late into night and early morn
Standing in the kitchen alone with thoughts
Salvaging burnt toast again

.. if this is really love

Listening to songs of mourn
Tributes to ache across eons
On repeat

Wonder where the strength
Is found within
As time goes on
Their pulse overtakes mine
Face more alluring
Lines soften and fade
Walls fall
Clothes line the floor
No turning around
Or so I've found

Burst

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Beauty of holding 
Breath expelled
Quick succession
Balloon fills its girth
Hearts beat like hooves
On cup day
Tension mounts
Truth like a pin prick
Bursts as flaccid pieces
Fall gently at four feet
Questions at ease
Posed so handsomely 
Hold hands and jump
Into a sea of soliloquy 
Knowing who one wants to be
Wayfaring strangers are we

Flight of the butterfly

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Lighter than a coin
Tickle my fingertip
If it were to alight
Upon my point

Drifting aimless
Blustery winds
Tumultuous, feral
Wearing nothing but scales

Aching, tender
Shedding colour 
Under weight of shelter
Another's touch

Fleeting, painfully shy
Obscuring its beauty 
Soon as footsteps pass by
My heart, the butterfly.
Penguin Island from Bruny  Tasmania

A slippery notion

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A sense no one can live without 
Yet barely speak its name
Some spurn the thought and shrink within
Though chase it all the same

A slippery notion thrives among
The family gathered round
As babes all supple on its milk
As grown, some never found

As fickle as the Autumn sun
Like lucid alpine tarn 
Its sweaty pounding heart drawns in
Only to cool you down

Extremes of sentiment poures out
Yet ambivalence within
Shouts of joy, tears in vain
Rally cry and sing

There's really no escaping it
(The hermit never tells)
Longing pulls us back in time
'Fore fears can knock us down

If unsure, simply pour
More courage in your glass
Take your eyes off the book
Don't let their next glance pass
The Gardens, Bay of Fires Tasmania

Long game

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How to play the long game
With someone well versed
In flash fiction?
Do I promise to love their every lover?
Desire drives the narrative on.

How to salvage a life come undone?
When moving parts are irreplacably human
Healing work is painful and long
Until two bodies borrow, become one.
The Gardens, Bay of Fires, Tasmania.

Love like

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A Blue Gum tree
Giants of the forest, we
Begin well-covered cap of seed
With strength to sprout
Show tender leaf

Idle as the years unseen
Camouflaged by wattle screen
Delicate orchids settle 'tween toes
Fungi covers underclothes

Ten years on, it shoulders weight
Peeping out of covershade
Creamy flowers dripped with leaf
Birds to nest, possums to feast

Straight of trunk
Strength of wood
Nor let it be
Misunderstood

Not hops or apples
Poppies or vines
Thriving in these
Cooler climes

A love like this
It must take time -
Precious specimens
You and I

Love like

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A dandelion
Much despised 
Hardy flower
For every dig
Sows more seed
Until it spreads
Its reedy feet
All over neighbours'
Fallow field
A tincture tea
To pep the heart
Set flight in spring
A work of art
As little copters
Spin on breeze
To plant ungovernable 
Bright young weed
WordPress stock image

Rush

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Truly startling
How heartache can feel
Like a rapid rushing
Over rocks
In time, over distance
A babbling brook
A trickle easing its way
To ocean 
Accepted by generous banks
Of rivers
To gaze upon it
Perched aloft
All creatures delight
Tumble, preen and feed
On its shores

So shall I
South Hobart Rivulet in early Spring, Tasmania.

Cures for love list

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In the vein of Ovid's Remedia Amoris

Don't let me near a bumblebee 
A lizard, owl or slimy leech
No butterflies or hilltop scree
Invertebrates nor anemone
Away with bells of pink or white
Dangling in the dappled light
No trudging through the crunchy snow
Or campstove fires in cabins glow
Pandani, fagus, kangaroo grass
If you want to air the grief 
Far away from nature's best
Put this cure-all to the test 
Nature lover, wandering free
One never forgets an ecologist!
Stairway to heaven at Freycinet National Park