narratorAUSTRALIA Volume One
Page 62
*** Editor’s Pick ***
Rain
Felicity Lynch
Katoomba, NSW
A shifting sky
Huge clouds racing
In a dark formless pattern
Spilling water onto dusty fields
And the surprised face
Of the anxious farmer
Who thought the drought would never end
Danced alone in a silent ecstasy
His tears and the rain mingling
Ed: While the concept of country farmers enjoying a breaking drought has been done many times, I kept thinking of this poem for days after first reading it, hence the Editor’s Pick. Its wonderful simplicity, direct message with no words wasted packaged with clean imagery meant it just kept coming back to me.
Thursday 25 October 2012 4 pm
Seasons Of The Day
Denise Martin
Gisborne, VIC
Misty morning cobwebs hang suspended,
A strand of white haze wreathes the purple range.
We see which face the mountain has extended,
Each morning when the moon and sun exchange.
The purple haze of midday summer heat
Invites the bees to court the open heads.
They dangle from the lips to coat their feet,
Dipping them into saffron pollen shreds
As evening silver dusk begins to creep,
The lights like stars come out again to play,
And living things prepare themselves for sleep,
Renewing life force for another day.
At last the blanket night is drawn around
As all the daylight noise is stilled once more,
A distant warning bark the only sound.
We sleep to dream, once more the soul restore.
Friday 26 October 2012
Five Thousand Galaxies
Robertas
Drummoyne, NSW
News!
The Hubble telescope has discovered 5000 new Galaxies in a small sector of deep space.
Here we are on our sub-microscopic dot – our beautiful garden – a nothingness in a teeming, inexhaustible Universe – a dot on the ‘i’ of Infinity.
It’s outrageous – but such a beautiful truth.
Our Hubbles and Palomars just have to stare at any space blackness to find more galaxies; thousands, millions and who knows? One day a glimpse across an impossible black expanse to see yet another glow and say, ‘There, there – another universe – and another – then, a galaxy of universes ...’
Wow!
But, to more important matters – my coffee’s full cream and I distinctly asked for skim – that makes me so angry – they never get it right!
As Robertas says, we’re each the centre of a unique universe!
Saturday 27 October 2012
Traces Of Glitter
Merlene Fawdry
Ararat, VIC
Our lives are like the glittered fairy wings my granddaughter wears. Sparkles fall with each movement, to leave a hint of her presence long after her cheery farewell has been snatched away by the shutting of the door. The smattering of glitter on my hand, after hers has slipped away to the next adventure, keeps her close to me. So too, do the remnants our ‘having been’ drop like shimmering trace elements, to blend with the residue of other lives, events, objects and emotions, building a montage of reflections for all who follow.
How well I remember the last time I was in my grandmother’s house, everyone gathered in the front parlour discussing the merits of her funeral service in polite voices, while silently assessing the value of her sparse estate. Now and again, an auntie emitted the obligatory sniffle, lace-edged hankie held under pinched nostrils, which set off a contagion of similar nasal utterances; empathically empty responses from middle-aged women in black-veiled hats. The uncles showed more restraint, noses twitching against the mothball odour of their dark suits, necks jerking against the discomfort of stiff collars, their desire to be elsewhere reflected in tearless eyes.
Cousins, recognised only from grainy photos distributed to the family each Christmas, and only those not yet old enough to escape the occasion altogether, stood in bemused observation. Young boys in ill-fitting suits hovered around the refreshment table, until a withering look from an adult sent them scurrying for fresher and safer air outside. Their sisters, gender-trained in decorum and expected behaviour, became food servers for the afternoon. Passing around trays of curling sandwiches and butterfly cakes with wilted wings, their private school decorum appeared at odds with the public school etiquette of lesser relatives, dialects colliding across cups of lukewarm tea.
In one corner my father, standing small against his older siblings, unfamiliar to me in this strange garb and sombre surroundings. His face stretched lengthwise in grief, blue eyes glazed with unshed tears in an orb of red veins. I tried to imagine what it must feel like to lose a parent, to better understand this event that robbed him of his familiar round-faced countenance, but it eluded me, leaving me tongue-tied and awkward in the presence of this fragile stranger. I averted my gaze to explore the pictures on the wall, sepia figures in heavy frames, a family without smiles arranged stiffly in unnatural poses, all glowering toward a central point. There was my father as an infant, the youngest of eight children, seated on his mother’s knee, blond curls falling on lace-collared shoulders, face blank in its innocence before the blade of life carved its noble character.
I searched the photo for recognition between this woman and the one I knew, before she was placed in the ground, packaged neatly in the small silver-handled coffin. The hand in the picture, resting gently on my father’s leg, is smooth and strong. It bears no resemblance to the inflated knuckles that pushed against the papery skin of her old age, a grid of dark blue, ropey veins crisscrossing the back of her hands. The thick dark hair, long sacrificed to wisps of white cotton that barely covered her pink scalp; the magnificent braid reaching beyond her waist reduced to a tatter of broken fibres. I wondered if this is the mother my father grieved for the most, the vital young woman of his childhood and youth, for surely he could not mourn the passing of the tired old woman she had become, whose every breath was a resentment against life.
I looked around the room to other photos of my grandmother, taken at different stages of her life, stopping at the formal portrait taken on her seventieth birthday. I immediately turned aside from the rebuke in her eye and I use the singular, as the other had been sightless for years, the dark twin of her good eye merging into the milky blackness of its surround. It was a look that left me in no doubt she could see right into my soul, uncovering some inner badness I’d been unaware of until that precise moment. I forced my eyes upward to meet hers, brave against this paper likeness, but my courage wilted with the image of my worthless self, as reflected in her omniscient gaze. The scent of her clothes reached out, that indefinable old woman smell, to blend with the pitted apples in the dusty bowl in the centre of the long table and the cloying scent of the flowers that had arrived with a tardy relative and I sought escape from the tableau in the parlour.
The passage was cool as it ever was, even in the middle of summer when the red line in the thermometer hovered around forty degrees for days on end. A dim tunnel of brown, it led from the front door with the coloured glass surround, to the solid back entrance that angled from the architrave it shared with the bathroom door. Pictures of broken-masted ships, engaged in ferocious sea battles, hung from tarnished brass hooks lipped into wide rails that stretched the length of both sides of the passage. The top of these paintings tilted forward, leaning sharply away from the wall, to sway eerily with the draft created as I walked by, my form mirrored, ghost-like, across churning seas.
Although not all the pictures were of battleships, most carried an aura of misery and austerity. Dour faces of my Scottish ancestors, dis
cernable only from each other by the style of hair and dress, added to the gloom. The theme of severity obliterated gender features, leaving the riddle of an androgynous heritage for each successive generation to ponder. The one exception had been a portrait of my grandmother as a young girl, forever beautiful behind the convex glass of the oval frame, the single lily held against her breast as creamy as the hand that held it. There was no judgment coming from the girl she had been, just the hint of a smile and warm acceptance in her velvet eyes. People often commented on how much I resembled my grandmother and I’d always objected strongly, thinking they referred to the photographs in the parlour. I wanted to look like the grandmother in this picture, soft and mysterious, and I practiced her pose in secret, substituting my dog-eared hairbrush for the slender lily as I simpered in front of the mirror in my bedroom.
Looking at the picture that day, an unexpected tightness gripped my throat and the sting of tears nipped the back of my eyes, as I understood the finality of her passing, leaving only the images on the wall to add understanding to the memories of those left behind. It was not only the old woman who had died, the one being ritually mourned by the gathering in the parlour, the essence of the young girl in the picture had also been lost forever. The sudden depth of my grief, a sorrow so unexpected and profound, surprised me. It erupted in a burst of blubbering that quickly progressed into an uncontrolled bawling. I slid to the floor in misery, causing the pictures to jerk and twist on their wires, waving frenetically down to where I lay curled on the brown linoleum.
Footsteps drummed against my ear. Mourners on a march to seek out the source of this break in family stoicism hovered over me. A sea of black hats, hemmed in by mothball suits, uttered their amazement.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s Trudy … crying.’
‘Who’d have thought it? I never thought she was that attached to Mum, did you?’
‘It just goes to show. Come along now Trude. Ah, there’s the girl.’
Arms reached out to hoist me off the floor; hands touching, pushing and pulling me back into the parlour where my father rescued me, drawing me into his corner. My presence acted as a signal for a demonstration of mourning to begin. Aunties abandoned their social chat and indiscreet laughter to cry loudly and inelegantly, collapsing in weary bundles onto the unforgiving wooden seats of dining chairs, while the uncles rubbed moist eyes and swiped the back of their hands under damp noses. Cousins, wandering in to examine the cause of the uproar, snivelled in sympathy against their mother’s bosoms, eager for inclusion.
I looked up at Dad and saw his mouth twitch in one corner. His stomach moved in spasms against my cheek, a sure sign that any minute he might break into the gut rumbling, unrestrained mirth he was renowned for and I knew he’d returned from that awful place. Taking my hands in his, we made our departure, nodding farewell to Grandma as we passed each picture.
We were not there to witness the outraged shock that stilled the display of grief, nor the wrangles that followed when the solicitor read Grandma’s will, although we certainly heard about it for months to come.
‘You always were a little sneak,’ one auntie accused my father.
‘No wonder you left early after the funeral … you knew what was coming didn’t you?’
There were many more comments in this vein, although much less polite, as aunts and uncles threatened to contest the will. Dad just went quietly about his business, lips set in a half smile showing he was unperturbed by all the fuss, knowing it would all come to a natural conclusion without any help from him. And when it eventually did, threats and insults replaced by expressions of relief, their comments met the same dignified silence.
‘I thought she owned the place. Whoever would have thought it?’
‘Thank God, she didn’t leave it to me. The place is only worth half of what’s owing on it.’
‘He always was a sentimental fool. He deserves it … debt and all.’
There was one more family gathering, although I was not included in this one, when Dad invited the aunts and uncles to take what they wanted from the house. It had been a real bun fight, he reported, when he arrived home that evening.
‘You should have seen them, Trude. All pretending they didn’t want anything, while inspecting hallmarks on silver and markings on china. They were that busy looking for a treasure they missed the real good stuff,’ he laughed. ‘But I made sure they all went home with a good haul. It doesn’t pay to be too greedy in this life.’
Although Grandma’s house stayed in the family, it remained in the background of my life, as growing up and the responsibilities of adult life left me selfishly focused on my own world and the happenings within it. I suppose at some stage Dad paid it off and maybe, between tenants, he went in and did maintenance work until it got too much for him, and then he left it untenanted. To be truthful, I didn’t really think about it until the day of his funeral when his will was read. The day the house became mine.
Going back into my grandmother’s house, my first impression on opening the door was one of aroma and colour as they had always been. Pears soap, cidery apples and damp ash, all over-washed in shades of brown, from the lightest tan to deepest chocolate. It aroused a familiar and comforting awareness of the stillness of time and I leant forward in expectation of seeing my grandmother, long black skirt with tiny cornflower motifs swishing against the brown linoleum. But there was no sign of the wrinkled walnut face, puckered in annoyance at the intrusive opening of her front door, just the hollow echo of an empty hall. Yet it was still the passageway of my childhood, long and narrow, watched over by the thickly varnished architraves and the austere wooden fretwork that marked the midway point. I began to doubt my decision to enter through the front door. My grandmother believed family members, like trades-people, should only ever come in through the back door. The front entry was for guests and the occasional visiting clergy. As both lessened in frequency during the latter years of her life, it was often unused for such long periods the door would stick fast and refuse to open at all. Then my father would put his shoulder to it, to force it open, and shave some wood off the door’s edge. Not being carpenterily inclined, his handiwork ultimately left the door somewhat too narrow for the opening, causing it to blow open when hot northerly winds dried the wood and it contracted to its previous size. He fixed this by adding a jigsaw of small pieces of plywood down the doorjamb. This remained as evidence of my father’s presence, although covered in layers of paint, holding the door in a tight embrace against the elements.
Shaking the silliness from myself, I took the first step across the threshold into the cool interior, rose-lit from the afternoon sun shining through the sidelight. It added a dimension of warmth and cheer I’d never noticed as a child and the drab woodwork of my memory now shone with the patina of burnished mahogany. I reached out to touch its strength, feeling the life in it.
I wandered from room to room, seeing beneath the layers of change to the house as I remembered it. My mind returned to the visits I’d made with my father, when I sat quietly as he assured his mother he would always look after her, passing vitality from his strong hand to her frail one. I saw in this action my own hand in his in more recent years, reassuring him through his lapses in memory, introducing myself anew on each visit.
‘Trudy,’ I would say. ‘I’m Trudy, your daughter,’ holding tight to my tears when he responded.
‘Trudy? Do we know each other?’
‘Yes, Dad. We know each other,’ I would answer and, behind the pale eyes, his confusion sometimes lifted long enough for him to share a brief visit.
‘Trude. I haven’t seen you for a long while. Sit down and talk to me.’
I came to that spot in the hall where the portrait of my grandmother as a young girl had hung so many years before. This was where I’d collapsed in tears on the day of her funeral and I fought the urge to throw myself down again and cry for all the losses that come with life. The passage was smaller than the one
held in my memory and my eyes were now level with the space on the wall. The picture has long gone and yet I saw it clearly, with the image of me as a young girl overlayed across the photo of my grandmother. Our faces merged and separated, the lily becoming a hairbrush and back again. I watched in fascination as it played out in a kaleidoscope of change and other faces appeared; my father as a boy and younger man and through the ages of his life, my own child and grandchild, all adding to the tapestry of our family. Different faces, yet remarkably similar, each fitting into the other in shape and features. It was the face of our family as it evolved from generation to generation.
The quick tapping of other feet in the passage broke the spell and I turned to greet my daughter and granddaughter.
‘What are you doing, Mum, staring at the wall like that?’
The space was blank now. The faces of my family had retreated into the fabric of the walls.
‘Memories, dear, I’m just looking at memories.’
From the corner of my eye, I saw her give a slight shrug that matched the raised eyebrow and wry smile. She didn’t understand and I didn’t have the words to explain, but I knew that one day she would see those same memories on walls of her own.
Small feet skipped up the narrow passage toward another future, and sparkles drifted lazily from fairy wings, flickering in rose-tinted sunshine, falling as traces of glitter that told of her being.
Sunday 28 October 2012
How The Bagpipes Were Invented
David Anderson
Woodford, NSW
Rising from Loch Ness, the monster headed for the shore
Turned south from Inverness as people shut their doors
Leaving plates of porridge and houses splintered from its tread
Gathering kilts and old Scotch whisky, to the hills the clan folk fled.
As the creature roared and snorted tales of woe and misery grew
Its wave of ill destruction was missed by just a few
The fateful journey ended near the shores of Loch Lomond
For Scotland’s finest whisky, it came to prey upon!
Stills crushed, their contents emptied, brought howls from every Scot
The monster’s in a stupor, the heathen drunken sot.
Fine whisky should be tippled, not guzzled, they did moan
Then the creature fell to earth, wishing to be left alone.
Clan folk all stood there gazing in wonderment and awe
They crept from moors and heather, some peeked from shattered doors
This appetite for whisky surely must evoke
Even greater mass destruction, once the monster finally woke!
Three cheers within the crowd – a solution has been found!
The creature’s waking headache must be met with terrible sounds
Drums, flutes and violins were played in tortured tune
This terrible cacophony, woke the monster from its swoon.
Taste for whisky unabated, it again commenced its spree
The fate of Scotland’s whisky? A future misery!
When, from a clump of heather, a sound arose so thrilling
The clan folk’s spines they tingled – but the monster found it chilling!
Bagpipes of old Mc – , a hasty laughable invention
Now had the creature running, grabbing everyone’s attention!
Cross mountain, stream and heather, Mc – followed it a’playing
The monster ran before him, whimpering and baying.
Following the path of its previous unrest,
It finally returned to the deep of old Loch Ness
Scots praised the piped invention that saved their precious drop
Bringing Nessie’s drunken rampage forever to a stop.
Monday 29 October 2012
Comfrey
Winsome Smith
Lithgow NSW
‘Comfrey, that’ll fix it,’ said Stan, looking at his son’s swollen ankle.
‘But I want it better by next Saturday,’ said Sam. ‘I’ve got to play footy.’
‘No problem, comfrey’ll do the trick,’ Stan reassured him.
‘Old wives’ tale,’ said Sue, Stan’s wife with a laugh. ‘Where did you hear about that?
‘You’d giggle at anything,’ Stan said, giving her a playful pat on the bottom. ‘Aunty May told me about it.’
‘That old gypsy woman? Really, Stan, you’d believe anything. I suppose she told you how to make rhubarb wine and mix a lovers’ potion?’
She walked away chuckling.
Stan obtained the required comfrey leaves. Sam watched hopefully as his dad boiled up the leaves, making a strong brew. Stan then soaked a crepe bandage in the liquid and when it was cool, wrapped it firmly around Sam’s ankle. Sam lay back on the lounge with his leg elevated, trying to look important.
Sue looked on sceptically. ‘You are supposed to be a tough guy,’ she reminded her husband. ‘Football coach and motor mechanic. Surely you don’t believe all that gypsy folk lore.’
‘Don’t forget it was footy and love of cars that took me out to the gypsies’ camp in the first place. Some of the gypsies’ kids are in my team. Leon’s a good bloke, and his mother, who everyone calls “Aunty May” is a real character.’
She was indeed a character. Stan had sat with her in her caravan several times as she related gypsy stories and told him how to make a hedgehog stew. She had a wisely wizened face and her long grey hair was done in two loose plaits. The caravan was crowded with bottles of wine, jars of pickles and mysterious preserved fruits.
She regaled Stan and her son, Leon, with a grainy kind of cake and a drink that Stan felt would frizzle his tonsils. She watched with amusement as Stan taught her grandchildren some football moves and worked with Leon, her brawny dark eyed son, on his old car.
After three days, Stan unwrapped Sam’s ankle. ‘Yep, it’s looking much better,’ he said.
‘It’s got to get better. I’ve got to be in that team on Saturday,’ said young Sam.
‘It will,’ Stan reassured him. ‘We’ll use the comfrey again, but this looks so good that by Saturday you’ll be able to play.’
Sue put her arm around Sam. ‘Dad’s right about you playing football.’ She turned to Stan. ‘I wonder if it’s got anything to do with the body’s natural healing powers, and a bit of confidence and positive thinking, to say nothing of a firm bandage.’ She said it with her usual chuckle.
‘The ankle’s healing, whatever it is,’ said Stan. ‘This afternoon I’ve got to go out and see Leon again. I’ll tell Aunty May about the comfrey. She’ll be pleased to hear that it’s working.’
Stan manoeuvred his car between the caravans and the broken down cars at the gypsy camp. He dodged a few enthusiastic dogs and carefully passed some washing lines. Near Aunty May’s van he noticed Leon with is head under the bonnet of his old car. Leon stood up, wiping his greasy hands on his jeans. ‘Glad you’re here,’ he said to Stan. ‘Can’t get this old beast to start up. Mum’s making merry hell. I can’t do anything right.’
‘Let’s have a look,’ said Stan as he got out of his own car.
Leon said, ‘Mum’s not too good. She took a bit of a tumble down the van steps a while ago.’
‘I’ll go and say hi before I look at the car,’ Stan said.
Just then Aunty May appeared at the caravan door. ‘Stan, I’m glad you’re here,’ she shouted. ‘Get me to a doctor straight away.’
‘What’s the trouble?’ Stan asked.
Aunty May continued to shout. ‘Leon was too useless to fix these steps. I fell down on me face this afternoon and banged me shins. I’ve got to get to a doctor straight away. You can take me; you car’s working.’
Stan couldn’t resist a sly comment. ‘Get the comfrey. Haven’t you got any comfrey?’
‘Comfrey! Hogwash!’ s
houted Aunty May. ‘I’ll need real medicine and something for the pain and something to stop infection. Don’t talk to me about herbs and such nonsense when I’m in pain.’
‘Just a minute, till I calm down. I can’t drive while I’m laughing like this.’
Aunty May flung a saucepan at him. Stan ducked and the saucepan smashed one of his headlights. It took a few minutes for Stan and Leon to become serious enough to help her into the car.
When Stan arrived home his son and Sue met him at the front door. Sam declared, ‘Look, Dad, my ankle’s better.’ It was Sue who said, ‘There might be something to this comfrey after all.’
Tuesday 30 October 2012
It Starts With A Big C And Ends With … Er
Kathryn Yuen
Hurstville Grove, NSW
six letters – two Cs –
to scare the life out of the living
jumpstart the walking dead
although the other mother of a
four letter ‘c’ word suits it better
like a bullet to Jack the Ripper
a lump of cells – a mass –
a parasitic beginning and journey
of a dis-ease – tumour humour?
as Life begins with birth
and ends with death,
so cancer is just another lifeform.
its challenge is growth, temporary survival,
to outpace its host’s attempts
to slow it down or eradicate
its beauty like that of a runaway train
often a disaster for travellers – no second chances –
sometimes a miracle of survival for passengers in transit
my youngest son peering into puberty
remembers you as the demon alien
who takes grandfathers away
I know you are not so discriminating
I’ve seen you make babies, children, and young folk
sleep into the day and beyond
Wednesday 31 October 2012
Virtual Obsession
Amber Johnson
Highgate Hill, QLD
With excess freedom comes an endless void. Sometimes the absence is only temporary. Other times, it can manifest into a fixed state. We are slaves of habit and thus, when the purpose of our ritualistic ways is lost, we must adapt another.