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The Pruning

The rose bush reaches and clings to Irmas heart

As she stands witness to the ravages of winter.

She sees the untidy tangle of now lifeless branches.

Thorns standing to attention

Like soldiers,Cruel in their intent to protect the bush

At all costs.

Withered buds

Like dead papery moths

Cling lifeless to the bleak spreading limbs.

A mini forest exists there in the rose bush.

Lichen covers stark branches,

A dandelion flower is caught on a thorn.

The forest attracts a living insect zoo.

A spider web outlined by dewdrops

Provides a stage for the drama of life and deathPredator and prey.

A tiny black spider

Inside his dew encrusted gossamer castle

Waits patiently

While the giant moth entangles herself further

Each desperate flutter of enslaved wings

To hasten her impending death.

An ant, more wise,

Avoids the web

And also the butterflys chrysalis

Which hangs from the hidden branch

Near the old stone wall of Irmas kitchen.

A few green leaves

Albeit tinged with brown

Cling with desperate grace to the branches

These branches stretching high

Begging

Beseeching

The dagger edge of frosty mornings

And the icy winds of winter

To ride the bleak cold season away forever.Irma read somewhere,

A rose bush screams when it is pruned.

Does it suffer the indignity with consciousness?

She wonders.

She ignores the protesting thorns

And with skilled hands cuts and clips.

Does the bush know this savage treatment will add to its beauty?

The length of its life?

Does it know the bees will swarm

To take nectar from its blossoms

The birds will sing in its branches

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The sun and rain will kiss its vibrant leafy being

And coax a dozen

Yet unimaginable scented blooms

From each of its now lifeless branches?

Does it know this?

Does it care?

Or is the selfish indulgenceOnly for the woman

And not the creature

With which she shares

The same time frame of existence?

Jill Baggett

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Sonnet

By this oak four poster sits a skeleton

clutching a pocket watch with arms of glass --

he fingers the gold chain like rosary;

from a gramophone there's no peace. I

toss and turn, a hand held to my heart;

the twilight drapes around me like a shroud,

my eyes burn bright and white as proud new stars;

a necklace coils around me made of lead.

A sudden emphasis on creeping bass,

a singer echoes, "Bela Lugosi's dead." --

the man of bone protects me with a kiss,

then wipes the feverish sweat from my red brow,

turns and bolts the door to his yellow tomb,and leaves me still, alone in the blackening room.

Stuart Barnes

Lyrics: David J. Haskins, "Bela Lugosi's Dead" (Small Wonder Records 1979).

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Spring

In rings of twigs the new night birds shriek like infants --

blind as bats, the hues of midwives' hands.

Winter's wound up like a pocket watch -- that God

of Plagues and Chaos laments on the isolate, chill wind

that threatens to cast the corrugated iron

from garage rooftops

and send me spinning like a child's top

into the first Apollonion arms I see.

And the trees, those creaking wardrobes, bow before

the moon as children before a demon queen,

and the moon rolls her one stupid eyeback in her glittering, fat black head

till it's all white and oily, like mother-of-pearl,

and mutters to herself, "How's that; that's that."

Stuart Barnes

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Brothers

today

i rode my bike

near the river

wed known as kids

the houses hefted on stiltsin memory of the 50s floods

the tracks along the banks

as lonely as our empty house

i thought of something you said

as we chipped up to the eighth green

at cabramatta last week

we were near the creek

and you said

you couldnt understand

why they didnt clean it upso people could put boats in and use it

i saw again for a moment

rowboats for hire

kids dropping from a rope tied high in the trees

oars slapping in rowlocks as fathers

rowed their sunday families upstream

David Falcon

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Home

On cycle rides

I pass by homes

I'd love to call my own.

Could have lived

in one for years now.Instead I end up,

when day of riding's done,

in my stuffy shell

I cannot prise myself from,

except on trips away,

and in my dreams.

Yet somehow I've still

been living in these other homes.

And in some sense could this

be just as real for them

as if they'd hadmy fleshly presence?

And will my stale abode

keep its hold on me

long after I have gone?

Marc Marusic

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Simon

Simon Penis,

after fifty years

of having such a name,

felt the time had come to change it -

so Peter Penis he became.Peter - coming from the word

in Greek for rock.

Did he hope its hardness

would come to mind in women

when he introduced himself?

Or was his reason just the same

as when he changed his doggie's name

from Saul to Paul?

Marc Marusic

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edge of leisure

another breaking morning

wave after wave

of communication

a beach of flotsam

drifting gossip

Noosa, Cronulla

all the coastal ladies

rising from their ocean beds

each a Phoenix

with a fish in its mouth

stretching eastward

towards the light

the birds know water

has employment for alland fire is a friendly sun

by mid-day, the ocean is flat

as a body on a beach-towel

nothing to do

but watch a capable nature

manage a mini-recession

in a leisure industry

where each beam of sunlight

supports a human cell

wave after wave

sounds achievable

another morning

a measured chaos

Margaret Owen Ruckert

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Tackle This

TV only mirrors society. Popular meme

From even before his fathers first whistle,

my son and I were a team, sport as metaphora familiar mantra to mothers who must survive

the baby, the bathwater, rules, expectations

of biased umpires, the outfield of politics

testosterone hyper-charged. Those men on TV

who kill each other are paid, I explained.

I said no guns, till he, at four was so grown up.

Mum, theyre not really real.

*****

The primary school had rung my place of work.

He was playing at lunchtime with friends.

The nurse thinks its a broken arm.

They didnt know how and could I collect him.

I drive, rethinking last night, his pleas

to watch a football match, State of the Origin.

Everyone else is. The print adverts were raw.

We talked about scrums, men in wheelchairs.

Praising him for being so brave, I throw in

a loose ball from the sidelines, Howd it happen?

A broken voice defended his position.

Mum, we were just tackling like the men on TV.

Margaret Owen Ruckert

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Anywhere Else But Here (A Tribute to Nol Coward)

I wish I was in the jungle

Amongst the creepers and vines

You just cant beat the stinking heat

Oh, it is divine!

Malaria, snakes and spidersAnd fierce, man-eating tigers

I really am sincere

Id rather be there than here!

I wish I was on the ocean

Riding the briny waves

A tropical storm would be a yawn

Its really what I crave!

Sea-sickness wont alarm me

Nor if the winds becalm me

I want to be perfectly clearId rather be there than here!

Id love to be in the desert

In miles of burning sand

Id love to gloat of my parched, dry throat

That really would be grand!

The scorpions all a-crawling

The heat and glare appalling

Im serious now, my dear

Id rather be there than here!

I wish I was at the North Pole

Surrounded by snow and ice

To have frosty breath and catch my death

It would be so terribly nice!

The killer whale, the polar bear

The thin, thin ice of which to beware

It would really advance my career

If I were there, not here!

I wish I was on a mountainHigh on a lonely peak

To cling all alone to a cliff of stone

Oh what a thrill to seek!

With fingers and toes all gripping

Until my grip was slipping

The descent would be rather shear

But Id rather be there than here!

Id just love to be in outer space

Amongst all the planets and stars

To drift uncontrolled would be really bold

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You could never drift too far!

The cold would be intense

And the silence quite immense

And no breathable atmosphere

But Id rather be there than here!

Lana Webber

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The Scarecrow

The moon hung low and still

Over the misty hill

Scarecrow stood alone

In the evening chill

His shadow stretched forlornOver the rustling corn

Scarecrow stood alone

A purpose to fulfil

The wind was an eerie moan

Over the fence of stone

Scarecrow, he moved not

Though the field was all his own

His rags were stuffed with straw

Which filled his heartless core

Scarecrow, he moved notLike one of flesh and bone

The footprints, they looked new

In the sparkling dew

Scarecrow could not see

The darkened trail they drew

His eyes were empty holes

That burned like blackened coals

Scarecrow could not see

The footprints left no clues

In the village near

Little children dear

Scarecrow on the hill

Filled them all with fear

They knew that on the morn

Another would be gone

Scarecrow on the hill

In the rustling corn

Lana Webber

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