Spring Show

Well, my blue wren is keeping up her regular morning visitations, this morning just after 6.30, and again this afternoon, and I’ve finally discovered it’s a she. I could hear the fluttering carry on from the next room, crept in with the camera, and there she was showing off on the bedroom window sill with her fella sporting the gorgeous blue markings distinctive of the male Superb Blue Wren. I think they were doing more than snuggling up in the tea tree in between their window display, so not wanting to be a perv and disturb their little tryst I left them to it.

With her morning visit waking me up enough not to be able to go back to sleep, I ended up grateful for the early morning call, for the mountain bathed in sunshine reflecting off the snow beckoned me as soon as I put up the blinds. Driving up the mountain as far as I dared I was treated with what should have been a winter spectacle until my frozen fingers and the wind threatening to bowl me over forced me back into the car.

Springtime in Tassie more often than not is the one time of year when four seasons in one day is not uncommon. Having been up the mountain on a previous occasion when the car decided to steer itself in a direction I wasn’t heading, I wasn’t game to go further and risk getting myself into a situation I couldn’t get out of.

I was well and truly rewarded though for my pre breakfast 
jaunt.


The purity of freshly fallen snow is something I find really special. It covers what we normally see, but in doing so helps us to see the landscape in a new way. 





It highlights things we often pass without even so much as a glance, the contrast of pink heath or new shoots or jutting rocks against their bright white blanket.

And if you stand still long enough you sense the mantle of snow blanketing sounds as well. There’s a silence in such a pristine environment that speaks volumes if you care to take time to listen.

Patience is a Virtue

My little blue wren is back. I affectionately call him my wren for he has chosen my bedroom window to visit on several mornings over the past week. With wings fluttering furiously he hovers up and down in front of the window, pecking at his reflection. I’m not sure if he’s trying to befriend the bird he sees, or declare in no uncertain terms that this is his territory and all others should go find their own neck of the woods to inhabit.

Whatever it is, he, or she for that matter, for it’s difficult to be gender specific with baby birds, chooses to arrive just after sun up each morning, and I’ve tried my best to capture this frenetic display on camera, but the moment I move the blind far enough to sneak a decent photo, he’s gone in a flash.

This morning he made his appearance at 6.20, up and down the window, peck peck peck, so while he transferred his frenetic ritual to the next bedroom, up went my blind. It’s Saturday morning I thought, I have all the time in the world, so slid back under the doona, wriggled into a comfortable position to lie in wait, camera poised ready for that “David Attenborough” moment.

An hour and a half later it was obvious no such moment was going to arrive. Venturing back to the tea tree in front of the window twice, and on one occasion with one of his brothers or sisters, the prospect of capturing on camera two wrens doing a fluttering frenzy was tantalisingly close. Did I twitch? Not a chance. Did they oblige? Not a chance. Something was amiss, and all I managed from one was a brief hop on to the window sill before taking off again. I imagine the blind being up changed the nature of his reflection, and despite the fact I didn’t move a muscle his perception of the situation had changed.

After another half hour I gave up. I’d certainly never get a job working for National Geographic. I discovered it’s not that easy lying completely still in one position for very long. No matter how comfortable, the urge to move doesn’t take long to creep up on you.

Patience is a funny thing. It really only comes into play when you’re feeling impatient, when things are not going the way you planned, when someone, and how dare they, has an opinion quite different from your own, and are quite convinced their way is just as good if not better than yours. Or when the task we have hinges on someone else doing their part, and they don’t, and we have to carry the can and sort out the mess.

Do we react negatively at such times? Probably, and we might feel justified in doing so, or are we prepared to be somewhat gracious and cut someone a little slack for their indiscretion. The degree to which we’re able to extend patience and tolerance cannot be underestimated, for our response could very well be returned in kind when we are the guilty party.

My obsessive little wren is hardly something to get uptight about, but I think my patience in waiting for the perfect shot is probably going to be outweighed by my impatience if he keeps coming back at the crack of dawn to tap on the window. After several early mornings this week, a Sunday morning reprieve would be most welcome.

Red Chair Sitting There

Went for a bushwalk the other day just on the edge of the village, camera in hand to see what delights I could find. As I wandered looking for the first signs of native ground orchids, this sight greeted me along one track bringing me to a halt and making me smile. It prompted me to wonder how it found its way there, and who might have left it.

Was it just a piece of junk, dumped before its final destination, or did it hold a message as it stood in stark contrast to its surroundings. Was the person who carried it looking for a spot to sit a while, find some peace and quiet, reconnect with creation and be refreshed.  

The humble discarded kitchen chair could be regarded as cluttering the scene, but it beckoned…

“Sit down, take a spell

close your eyes a while

listen to the silence

see if you don’t smile.”

A rock or stump would have sufficed, but if the chair hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t have stopped to wonder at this incongruous addition to the scenery. I would have kept going, enjoying the walk, but stopping for a while helped me take time to use my senses more keenly. Listening, touching, even if it did mean a leech wanted to have a go at me, smelling, looking closer, seeing both the beauty of the bush as a whole, as well as observing the intricate details of moss and lichen, bark and ferns, rocks and fungi.

Tuning into the spirit of the place, letting the bush pass through me, instead of me simply passing through the bush.

Red chair sitting there

By the bush track

Says loud and clear

Come sit a while

Before you head on back.

Gardener's Lament

Deer eat agapanthus

Leafy hedges, saplings too

Whate’er is it they shouldn’t eat

They come in and chew.

You’d think the grass would be enough

To satisfy their needs

I wish they’d come into my yard

And free me of my weeds.

What has happened in the bush

To change their diet so

They never came and ate these things

Many moons ago.

It’s usually in times of drought

Our night invaders come

But with yards a year round smorgasbord

They find take-away on the run.

Once tall and leafy plant life

Screening blank brick walls

Are denuded now of waving fronds

And chewed down to their stalks.

My veggie plot’s abandoned

It used to yield a feast

But all it fed as years rolled by

Were nightly hungry beasts.

The possums strip the fruit trees bare

I’ve given up the thought

Of juicy summer nectarines

My efforts come to nought.

The wallabies get in the act

The pademelons too

I used to think that they were cute

But now I just yell ‘Shoo.’

Why don’t the deer cooperate

Chew things we have to trim

Work with us like the gardener

Why can’t they be like him?

Instead, they’re quite selective

As they wander yard to yard

A broad leaf here, a flower there

Making it so hard

To work out exactly what it is

They really cannot stand

Then plant that in profusion

To cut off their demand.

I never thought I would regard

The fallow deer a pest

Go eat your own bush greenery

Come on, give ours a rest.

Meet Me at the Bottom

We don’t necessarily have to hit rock bottom before we get motivated enough to pull ourselves up and out of the muck we often seem to have settled for in life. But that whole area of our lives of unfulfilled dreams or regrets or fear of failure that stops us from opening the door even just a crack on what might be possible out there, has been in the forefront of my thinking as I’ve participated in The Artist’s Way course these past few weeks. I have a habit of not wanting to attempt something unless I can do it properly, hence many tasks are begun and not finished, but one thing highlighted in the course is that we have to be prepared to produce ‘bad’ art of whatever sort in order to start the journey.

Every stroke of the brush, every phrase created, every note recorded, every dance move attempted, every photo captured, is a step in the right direction. Stepping back and observing what we’ve created might produce a positive or negative reaction from both ourselves and others, but at least it’s something to work with. We have a tendency to compare our efforts to the masters in our chosen field, which as beginners can be extremely deflating. There’s no point putting your first completed canvas next to a Van Gogh, for instance, and as I’m no literary genius, there’s no point judging my efforts against the authors I admire either.

What I can do though is start at the bottom, as hard as that may be, and stumble however precariously towards the goal, for I’m finding that by putting one foot in front of the other, however slowly, the process is gathering a momentum of its own, in much the same way as this poem has evolved over the last couple of weeks. What better way of marking the last day of winter than throwing off the dark, cold dreariness and preparing for the new spring of life which is to come.

Meet Me at the Bottom

Helter Skelter

meet me at the bottom

Bruised and battered

curled into a ball.

Get out of the dirty ditch

bedraggled and forlorn

Brush off the stinking mantle

and slink away to mourn.

Helter Skelter

meet me at the bottom

Screaming like a banshee

braced against the fall.

Grazed and bleeding grab a hold

stumble on into the night

Split the dank and settling mist

stay up, the end’s in sight.

Helter Skelter

meet me at the bottom

Tearing down with pure delight

in answer to the call.

Hair flying, eyes wide, 

a grin from ear to ear

Surefooted, balanced now

gone the hollow fear.

Looking right back at 'ya

With no new novel at my disposal to delve into this week, I found it rather fascinating that at a time I’ve been reflecting on reflections (no pun intended) and mirror images, I chose to pick up Trezza Azzopardi’s novel Remember Me which I read a few years ago. I’d glanced along the shelves, and as this was one for which I couldn’t remember the storyline, thought it well worth revisiting.

I wasn’t long into it before significant symbols were cropping up, foremost among them that of mirrors, both remembered from the main character’s childhood as well as decades later in her old age. How the shards of a broken mirror reflect a fractured self, an image in fragments, not the whole, how they can be full of sorrow, how the number of human beings gets multiplied just by looking.

Never trust a mirror: full of lies, just like the papers.

Lillian avoids mirrors, somewhat threatened by what the reflection represents, wondering whether what she sees is really her. Whether the essence of what makes her who she is, is standing on this side of the mirror looking in, or lost inside the mirror world. She senses her other self in the mirror, beckoning her, daring her to come.

As a child, in the dead of night, a week after she catches a glimpse of her ‘stand out in the crowd’ red hair now bleached blond, she plucks up the courage to climb on a chair and seek out her reflection.

It’s too late now to stop myself. Not edging up into the glass. Not going sideways like a thief, stealing in from the corner of the frame. I will face her straight on, wide eyed….to let in the light from the darkness….I have to be sure she wasn’t just hiding, trying to trick me. But I can’t see a single thing. It’s black as a hole. No one looks back at me, there is no one on the inside. I get as close as I can, trying to see through the mirror, to see through it and beyond it, beyond the glass sheet, and the silver, through the wooden back of the frame and the rose wallpaper and the chimney and out through the brick and into the night. Trailing specks of mortar, black ash, dust, flying in the darkness to seek her out, find the girl, show her that I am me.

Quite apart from being a great piece of prose, it begs the question Who am I? Am I comfortable in my skin? I know as I get older I spend less and less time in front of the mirror, only stopping long enough to make sure my hair isn’t sticking out in too many directions before heading for work. As the wrinkles etch deeper I wonder about the dreams the younger version of me had in decades past, and if those dreams are still not fulfilled, why they were left by the wayside. Another poem came to life from all these ruminations.

My spirit shell upon the wall

beckons me to come.

She dares me to come looking,

has power over me

taunts me for the life unlived

time stolen, gone for good.

Is she trapped inside her wooden frame

Or am I trapped out here.

Does she wonder what I wonder

has she done the same as me,

Or has she lived a thousand dreams

that I could never see.

Do I take from her the years of life

Or does she take from me

A little piece of skin and bone

in order to be free

from that nagging, sinking feeling

that by drawing in my breath,

there’ll be more and more

of her to see

and less and less of me.

Do her lifeless eyes see nothing

as we watch each other’s moves.

Do we sneak a look occasionally

does she smile or disapprove.

Are my secrets safe there on the wall

does she want me to be free

Is my image there my lifelong friend

Or my enemy.

Shovelling in the Words

The past week has been fascinating, as if the top of my head has been prised open and someone has been shovelling words and phrases in at a great rate of knots. After several weeks of The Artist’s Way course and sharing with my fellow travellers, and reading Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg in 24 hours, I’ve suddenly gone into this frenzy of writing.

But not what I was expecting.

I’m writing poetry, something I haven’t touched for nigh on forty years and a task I’ve never really wanted to pursue. My scribblings of decades ago have been culled on more than one occasion, for whenever you revisit old poems or short stories you wonder what on earth you were thinking at the time. They are often stilted, morbid or maudlin, self indulgent, images and metaphors piled on thick as custard. What prompted their outpouring is a distant memory, and the emotion dies in the words.

What I’m doing now might end up just the same. In a week’s time, in a month or more, I might look back and sneer at my feeble attempts, but as I commit to this journey and take it seriously I’m discovering something new, and coinciding with the Olympics may be no coincidence at all. No athlete goes out to run his race without training and routine practice, without warming up, stretching. It’s a no brainer really, something I already knew but have been resisting.

The very act of putting pen to paper on almost a daily basis is opening my eyes, my ears, my mind, opening me, opening up possibilities. ‘Helter Skelter meet me at the bottom’ came from nowhere the other day. Or rather, somewhere, spawning a poem yet to be finished. Words and phrases and images are fighting for space in my head right now, I’m wondering where they’re all coming from, and while they’re not leading me in the direction of the novel I thought I was heading towards, they’re leading me somewhere.

There’s no point waiting for the Road to Damascus moment when the heavens will open and the message will be loud and clear. Right now I’m on the dusty road though, practicing, stretching, warming up for the main event.

MIRROR IMAGE

When I look into the mirror

what reflection looks at me.

My right side here

is right, right there

my left where it should be.

But when you stand before me

you see a different me.

My right is on your left hand side

my left is on your right.

I’m back to front

In body

Am I back to front

in mind?

Do you understand my motives

can you see my latent dreams

Can you navigate

the fissures of my mind?

Do you see beyond the body

are you brave enough to try?

Do I dare to let you

see inside

in those moments you ask

Why?