Rainy day in Redfern

Rainy days tend to free me up from all distraction. Distractions like ‘I could be at the beach’, ‘...mowing the lawn’, ‘...washing the car’, ‘gardening’, ‘visiting ...’. You know the list of sunny day pursuits we entertain in our heads, EVEN!!! ... when we are hard at work. And there are so many songs about the rain.

When I was a kid I never felt like I was missing out when the rain fell from the sky in my home town, which it did with regularity some times. If I could get outside there were dams to build, ice block sticks to race down gutters, fun with puddles and in these fun puddles, eventually, tadpoles to harvest and grow into frogs (or other less attractive critters). Inside my bedroom I loved to watch the patterns of water that swept across the glass as art, accompanied by the symphony of sounds, curling and chuggling down the drainpipes, as a mixture of nature’s refreshment poured over the resistance offered by the clusters of green frogs from their secret hiding places.

Days like these were great days for reading books and comics. To escape to far flung places, for Biggles moments and Tarzan adventures. Rain days are still perfect for reading, not that there is a bad day for reading a book. And today, this last Friday in Australia for a while, I hide in coffee shops around Redfern where anonymity ensures freedom of thought and ink.  Redfern, the Aboriginal heart of Sydney, I feel good here, writing poetry. Nothing fancy. Just my thoughts and ideas, converted into lines and loops, the freedom of old technology pushing simple rhyme and black ink onto unlined paper. Rainy memories and introspective moments coming to life atop tables in places with names like Appetite, Just Coffee,Tea & Me and Nookie. Great places for the kid that still lives inside of me to play in the  possibilities that come when the mist forms over the earth once more. 

A Rainy Day in Redfern

I have grand ideas then none

A shaft of light undone

By nothing more than doubt

When I want to write and shout

Doesn’t anyone see what’s going on down here?

I could fill up these pages in a day

And still never finish what I want to say

Like I read a menu without trying them all

In cafe with pressed metal ceilings and mirrors on the wall

Does anyone care that the earth is crying?

A rainy day in Redfern that familiar sound

Gurgling drainpipes but no frogs around

And I feel inclined to the voice of the pen

I’ve only one book to write but it has no end

And I like to think about whispering grass... can you hear it?

Something in the Air

I often recall the thunder in my heart

the dysfunction called love

the static of my art

lost in dreaming

words crying

while seeking understanding

and I the poet

in the distant hidden

shadows of the white

man’s landing.

There I painted pain 

with syllables

reckoned life with rhyme

holding fragments

where they shattered

looking for Revelation

with linguistic line

learning how to tame 

the terror

of no greater death

then losing love

became the error

and I cried

but not enough

And the thunder

lay silent

like a truant

to love

there was a solution

but the silence

was tough

until with a Sunday

dawn’s clear breaking

the simple sound

from a bell

I heard my author’s 

sweet wisdom

from the Book of the Kells

and wonder

replaced

the thunder

Asylum Seeker

At last I’m free from isolation

independent of hestitation

frustration and infatuation

that turns dreams into desperation

and goodness into drums of black

that cover the joy of billboards

and delete the horizon called truth

like emails that offend.

And George’s last words are never ending

and uppermost in my mind

     ‘Don’t forget to love one another!’

But we do forget

we the ones who claim 

the lucky country for our own

forget to love our neighbour

as to love ourselves profess.

Or do we?

And as we condemn ourselves

we send our neighbours back 

in silence...and...

in shame.

This song from awesome and beautiful Indigenous Australian singer, Christine Anu, begins  in the streets of Redfern. Enjoy!!