Pi

The number pi's a mystery
Both deep and most profound
He multiplies diameter
To find the whole way 'round
His decimal goes on and on
Never to repeat
Some say he is irrational
I think he's rather sweet

A collection of short poems

Crunch of gravel under the wheels on the neighbor’s driveway
Shifting, sliding, slipping steadily
Spread in random showers
A true Zen stone garden.

***

Grey clouds on the range
Humidity pressing on your shoulders
Like the cares of the world

***

Sitting on my veranda
I hear the birds in the Jacaranda
I hear the heavy rush of wheels on the main road
I know which I prefer

***

The road lies dormant at night
A sleeping beast dreaming dark dreams
Bitter burning on the tongue that flickers out to taste.


***

When I was at school
My father with razor bladed cutting tool
Carved into the blunt end of my pencils
Baring raw wood
On which he would write my name
Thief proof
Sometimes people are marked in much the same way.

***


Here in the hinterland
Hope grows slowly
A precious seed

The 'non-sense' of Dance

Think about dancing. What a strange practice to the fiercely rational mind! Partners in embrace, agitating on a floor with other couples, no destination in mind, and no purpose other than the enjoyment of the moment.

Think about ballroom dancing as done by Fred and Ginger. An elegance with no meaning or significance other than itself. Great beauty, high art, transient but glorious.

Dancing has rules. There are parameters. There are skills to be learned. One may dance poorly or well, but the pleasure in the participation may have little to do with the technicalities of the dance or the skills of the dancer. The aim is the process. Participation is the point.

Metaphor time. Maybe life is like the dance. We take to the floor for pleasure. There are rules but we gladly submit, for the pleasure. Although constrained, we are free in ways we cannot be in the mundane world of directions, destinations and goals.

Let’s dance!

Zombies!

Some people have an empty smile
That does not reach their eyes
I am quite sure they do not know
They do not realise
It causes me to ponder
And it really makes me feel
That far from being fictional
Some zombies are quite real

My Nana

My Nana was the last of the real old ladies
She knew what it was to be an old lady and she rose to the occasion
Taking on the role and making it her own

She was an old lady a long time, her husband Frank dying young at 57
Her hair was white
She let it be white
She kept it tied up in a bun
Sometimes, if you stayed overnight, you saw her take it out of the bun and brush it, long, silky and with waves
She used bobby pins
Everyday

She wore old lady black shoes
Just one pair
She had bunions on her feet
They hurt
When she walked she tended to hobble, back bent
An old lady walk

She wore old lady dresses
And cardigans
All the time

She had a pet dog, Scamp, on whom she doted
He got old too, in sympathy I think
My God, did he smell bad
A spoiled nasty bad tempered dog
Maybe he had bunions too

You could walk over to Nana’s place
Around the golf course
Down Duncan Street
And she would always be glad to see you no matter how adolescent you were
Feed you sweet cakes
Slip you a dollar when you left
Sometimes because you did something for her
But often because you didn’t

She made jelly, with extra sugar
She kept a little jar of brown sugar that you could have a teaspoon of if you were good
She made pineapple syrup on the wood stove so that the whole house smelled like heaven will smell
She made roasts with the outside black but inside warm and heavy and fragrant
When I was older I cut the wood for that stove

She used to laugh, hold her hanky to her mouth and say things like ‘Jingy Joves!’
You don’t hear that enough anymore

I remember her washing in a copper boiler
I remember the ice man who used to call with a huge block of ice for the ice chest
I remember the dunny in the backyard
I remember digging pink sweet potatoes out of the rich soil and eating them raw
Of course all of this was when I was much younger

It seemed as I got older and bigger she got smaller and thinner
Almost as if her substance was going to form my flesh and bone
She lived alone in that one bedroom fibro house until she died, aged 83

For nearly 30 years she was an old lady
She wore it well

Where do I begin?

We base our language and much of our thought on the notion of separateness. We distinguish objects from their backgrounds. One of the most enduring separate objects is our selves. The idea that we are a separate entity from our environment and other beings is so deeply ingrained, we find it ludicrous to consider alternatives.

Yet when we examine this notion we find that it is physically and mentally without support. Our boundaries are fuzzy. We draw them arbitrarily. We superficially think that our 'self' begins at the boundary of our skin. Even an elementary grasp of physiology recognises the falsehood of this notion. Our skin boundary is porous allowing a flow of materials in and out of our bodies. We depend on our physical environment for our continuing existance. We are deeply emeshed in a physical web of flow between us and our environment and our fellow beings. To think we have a separate existence is like thinking our liver could decide to leave home to join a rock band.

Even within our skin the boundaries are fuzzy. Shrinking in size we see systems, organs, tissues, all of them, in some sense, 'us' and yet 'not us'. Finally, we see a mix of molecules and atoms. When did we pass the boundary from life to non-life? Are some carbon atoms us, are some not us? Where did we go?

Perhaps the idea of 'me' is a social convention. Perhaps the delusion of a separate subjective experience in a world of objects is what helps to create our suffering. Perhaps the ultimate liberation is to be liberated from ourselves. 'He that shall find his life will lose it'.

Aristotle

'We are what we repeatedly do'
Aristotle said that,
And I think that it's true

Of course, Aristotle has long become dust
As you and as I
Regrettably must

So, given the time you're going to be dead
When all has been done
When all has been said

Spend these precious moments the best you know how
Decide to start living
And do it
Right now!