Johnny

Found a bottled fright to haunt him
Shook it off and achieved solitude.

Put a prayer-gap between himself and grief
Until it mugged him on the street

Late morning Saturday
After Mass near Holloway.

A surprising condemnation
Of an uneventful life
A verdict built
On the sure foundation
Of ignorance.

'How could he have been happy
So far from home and folk?
How could he have been any good
And we not know of it?'

The long- awaited letter from home
Proved justification of the weary choice
To take the boat and leave them
To their grasping.

Snatch away
At our absence.

Communal confession nineteen-thirties style:
Fr O'Neill vexed on his horse,
Champing to escape his flock of pious children
Their keen veniality
Pricking the patience of his mount,
Drawing pardon from exasperation:
   'Ah sure, ye're fine'
   Now mind me way!'

He blessed and the Red Sea parted

Leaving grace in Cappataggle

For gravy in Loughrea.

Hard for me
To lead his Vigil Mass
Farewell to London.

Hard but proud,
There before street-filled pews
Each stumbling shuffler a daughter or brother.

Thinking back to mother's second glances
At daylong drinkers
By the Clapham Common tube.
Had Johnny popped up south?
  'Woman, behold your cousin'.

See the strength too
Of the escapees,
Wary victims of daylight nightmare
Daily ambushed by former slavery
Johnny, exile and escapee,
We'll bury you in Aughrim.
London town
Couldn't hold you down.

Kitty and Katty are there,
Local lads too, throwing turf-scraws at the screen
When reels are changed.
An evening long-remembered
Buster Keaton a bit part in memory's epic.

Buster played second-string to the loaf
Torn to shreds as they shrieked their way home,
Small-handed Katty in and out the jar
Smearing jam on sawn-off slices,
All hands washed at the bridge
So's not to be too savage.

Haagen-Dasz at the multiplex
Another
(Not so tasty)
World.

Letters home measured
Profit in pigs
Success in sows
Happiness in hogs

Their frequent litters
God's abiding blessing.

In Cascade where they lived
Now dwell descendants
The progeny of hardy types long past

There by the well
No porch but a pen
No tables but a trough
No humans now but hogs

Close to home
Their ancestry assured,
Chewing
Over family roots.

The shot knocked back,
The sudden kick,
Knowing this is mine.

A remnant rejoicing
Mild but rousing
More than a tear.

UnEnglish.
Excessive.
Roman.

While granny has her knees-up
Father, adjacent, groans
Grateful for the trade
Looks towards the day
He'll join his generation
Misty-eyed and tongue-loosened
Punks unplugged.

'Rivers of Water'
Thanks world wanderers!
You show me
What to write.

Let the world know
Rivers of water woke me up.
Like the
    fountains of Florence
    and driving drizzle
Ebb will ever flow.

So will I,
    freshening
    flattening
    thrilling
    chilling,
    sleeping during drought.

Yes, world,
In our inertia
Rivers flow on

So wash me away
Again,
Never the same
Twice.

Some spreading ricepaper
Of latest pressing
On that rocky roasting-plate

Others ancient,
Drowsy with dreaming
Lately laced by stubbies

    Strange land
    Strange endurance
    Common lot.

Some far in time and miles
From former homes
Grateful for centuries so still
And former ways so strong

Different to us
Yet sometimes on our track
(Seen sometimes
Hand on fax)

    Similar yet not
    They free us     Free us to be similar     Yet not.

Drag me screaming to my notebook,
Ankles bruised.
Tomorrow I'll be polishing
(Or sweeping broken ice?)
Carving words
Out of
And into
Life.

Drag me out,
The lines may even dance.

Past the yachts of Edinglassy
Past the warship now no longer

Shimmer east and over westward
Dazzled in the glare of sunset

Past the convicts' slimy quarry
Hear the hurt returned to Logan

Sense the same revenge desired
By the native, con and soldier

Shine still onward, glimmer river,
Sprinkle starlight as you shiver.

Time passing
Stands still

Letting me frame the mind's eye

Its people and its possible

Its moments asking remembrance

Up there
Out there
Air and water

Netted.

Siblings to Oz,
Asia their kissing cousin.

Tropical tribe
Mixed race,
Children of Brisbane and Bali.

Roof-fans and tree frogs
Rainforest and box-jellyfish,
Today's news from the plane, after lunch.
Arid acres south

Warm seas north.

Now tourists
Late for luck
Pan too.

Then
Thirty miners and five police
Fought until death
Civil outrage
In a land without (white) strife.

Now
The shaft's still fruitful
When digging
For a fair go

This nugget,
The true enduring Standard.

Lost for words worth ink
I come back to everyday
Songs stories people.

Amused, muse absent
Stilled enough to ask

Why not me?
Why watching and listening,
Why not making?

The answer:
Live this moment
Ears eyes nose open.
Refuse to see it dead,
Demand its secret.
Touched by its value
React.

After easy solitude
Acquaintance slowly self-assembles.

This the early time
Enjoyable isolation

This, a pattern so familiar
Ice breaking
While my mind is on warmer waters past.

Why begin again?

Look to last time
For your answer.

Free to meander
I wonder round my mind,
Glancing at the white-plastered bricks
Of this Cathedral cell,
At one with Empire exports
Half a world distant from their loves

This elsewhere, elseworld, all around,
Now for them a nightmare with no rousing
For both keepers and kept,
Tending their tight and anxious breathing,
Scanning the seas for memories.

'Tyranny of distance', people used to say.
Self-confident they pine no more
And yet, under their luminous sky,
Come black holes to mind.

Better to know there's nothing
Than expect.
Expect zero,
Handbrake happiness.

True,
Postmen don't deliver
Friends write late,

So why this grim intensity?

Joys remembered
Jolt.

That shared life, laughter,
Eyes that say
'You count'.

Falling headlong from those heights,
Each message breaks my fall.

Curious too
To stand with concert faithful
And feel apart,
A story replicated
Shoulder to sweaty shoulder.

Elderly at 37
Yet younger than the band.

Unable to sleep
While the beds are burning.

Dream with your lush colours
Overhead, within, along,
In that broad landscape
Make us hear: Belong

Silver screen
Our earthly dream

Dream of losers exultant
When loss turns victory,
Able now
To bear the waking day.

Silver screen
Repair our dreams

Dream us into others' lives
Familiar but unknown,
Enmeshed in them
We know their flesh our own.

Silver screen
Our mutual dream

Dream with us,
Wider and kinder
Christened in your gleam
Petty minds now noble
Failures now redeemed.

Silver screen
Our waking dream

And catches it?

But does the desired calm
Disregard this effort?

Does it fall like manna,
Or is it only caught
By hearts and minds prepared?

How then to prepare?
Emptying or filling
To teasing in the peace?

For my sake,
May the centre
Grab each of us
Despising our preparation.

Majestic,
May the desert and the rock
Send us away chastened
Decentralised

Each 'I'
Relocated

In a wide horizon.

Miraculous
Luxuriant
Mutuality

In a scorched crevice
Of King's Canyon.

Theirs a secret source.

She ranges over bush
Scuppering any Anglo-landscape

Her partner the spiniflex,
Low and stocky
Wiry and without splendour
Its alone the mighty Nullabor

Only at that desert's outskirt
Returns the gum
A daytime spark of night

Approaching the city
The line of gum steps back,
Remembering its eerie kin
Held hostage in the Park.

And for its scrubby partner spiniflex?
No such shame.

High foam hats
Signal playful patriotism
Northsoutheastandwest
Shamrocks on the black stuff

Tut-tut if you will
But do so with a smile
Glad for Irish eyes
On an ungreen isle

Far from Tipperary
On Sydney's Rocks

One arm lifted raises half of them
He stands, scatters,
And the leftovers are gone
With the gannets.

Sharing a vigil
For the Big One
The line of surfers wait,
Bobbing in solidarity.

Arriving, it smashes their equality

The exalted swerve and sway,
The damned bite the foam

Spluttering to the surface
They see their betters run out of wave,
Human too,
Swallowed by broken breakers.

The voracious now departed.
He waits too.

This tussled tourist's thoughts
Turns to transportation horrors,
No land since Gravesend,
Former lives
Long buried.

These days different,

Tamed inlets yachtified
Speed boats skim past the prison island
Leisuretime sails mass like gulls homing
As glowing evening glares before embering.

The end in sight now,
Clouds hang
Under the wide-skied bay

(An embrace extended
From mother Oz)

Hungry for home,
A single gull leads the eye
To the city's manhatting towers
And their much encored jewel,

Its quay
Opening Oz to us.

Come for Coral Sea breezes
Where palm sprouts palm
And muzak trills:
Gypsy kings 'speak softly love'
Piano tinkles, sax sulters,
Endless Estefan.

Chilled beer at 10.30
Fine young cannibals up early
The waist-high pool their bar
Last night dimly hazy
Shelter from their red-eyed gals
The tune 'She drives me crazy'.

Today's cocktail: Summer Breeze
Today's activity: Champagne Twister
For the hearty jetski or tube,
Glass-bottomed cruise,
Snorkels, flippers,
Or paraglide by teatime.

Club Croc
The place to be.
The tune
'Don't cry for me'.

Stealthy waves remote approach.

Over confident
Up ended.
Hat still on,
But humbled hanging on,
To right myself unable.

Then came damsels
To my rescue.
Expert oar assistance
From a mother and daughter,
Making all aright.

Moral?

Take the safer path,
Baywatch
Mums and babes.

Fingertips away
Serenity smithereened
Coral sea a whiskered acquamarine,
Water wall behind beside
White horses flicking spray in midgallop
Across the ferry tail.

Episode closing
Reef peace yearning
Quick return choosing.

Lavish care for the senior
Out from her care home,
The highlight of today, toweek
A joke with the young man
Replacing his healthy breakfast
With something sweet.

Opposite, builders restore
A bastion of Nelson's past,
Conduit for the river of tea
Flowing since its foundation,
The customary British baptism.

Weak or strong
Often English Breakfast,

No hurt intended
Only a first impression,
A Polaroid emerging from the mist

Calling forward
Clarity and colour.

Knocked out on away goals
How heed Chubawumba?
Knocked down won't get up more.

Timarú to Tekápo
Resound to my grieving,
Remember not Schmeichel.

The wild colonial TV hero
Consults the blackfellah
Wondering at the stranger's will
To put a road through his Dreaming.

Whitefellah need it
"Not get lost"
"What is get lost?"

My ticket shows me the way

To get lost?

Suddenly brother
To a fatfish floating by,
As we're related
He lingers in armsreach
Unafraid.

Elsewhere more marine Eden
Perfect creation and no forbidden fruit.

These moments a hint
Of that initial bliss,
A pledge of its return.

Confidential calm
And a licence to linger.

Cloud Nine's cappuccino?
Another plane.

Return to warmth and wilderness
April showers its gifts
On a corner of this old capital
Parched though the sun don't shine
The gardener returns,
Unburnt spring
His heart's glow.