Creosote

Is the scent

of an ancestor’s skull kicked
down a bush runway –
an elephant remembers

bones and dust,

the echo of hyena
comedy nights, jaws
on buffalo bones

chalk and dust,

a tall silhouette beyond the runway –
a blind man – inhales the dusk
for ghost-lions
before crossing to light
the camp fire

blood and dust

in the dark, leopards
gaze at embers
of an ancient story

fate throws the bones,
a plane flies
into a hillside

flesh and blood,
bones and dust,

and creosote.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Nostalgic

‘Science of Nostalgia: It was first thought to be a “neurological disease of essentially demonic cause,” but it turns out that nostalgia is good for your brain. And there’s science to prove it.‘
More of this article in The New York Times

I took this (rather overexposed) photo of my nieces cooking dinner around 20 years ago when we all still lived on the African continent. We had given one of them a children’s cookbook for Christmas, and they invited us over for dinner—a three-course meal—which they cooked using recipes from the book. They were such sweet, funny munchkins – still are 😉

For more entries to this week’s photo challenge, see The Daily Post.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Home

“Home is where the heart is.
Home is so remote.
Home is just emotion
sticking in my throat.

Let’s go to your place.”

Lene Lovich

The decor of this Sydney restaurant is a colourful reminder of the linguistically and culturally rich country that was my home from birth to mid-life.

My favourite from this week’s challenge was this one from Jo Bryant.

See The Daily Post for more photographic interpretations of ‘Home’.

Engrammatic Blot

“In the dream,

she
got on the bus
and left, not
looking out the window,

you
crossed the street
and disappeared
into the crowd, never
looking back”

I
tried to erase
this, but
it’s grown
a monstrous
smudge

Migrations In Memoriam

Autumn, we lay lines,
unfurling across alpine waters,
to flycatch a trout’s eye

Spring,
we are copper lizards
on rocks trailing
the flowered creases
of Crackenback

Autumns and summers,
we zigzag
to the summit,
always a marking of sorts –
birthdays, deaths, waiting out
open-heart surgery –
from afar

A lifetime of seasons
ago – before I left –
you said
the mountain came down
and swallowed lives,
wanted me to know
that bad things happen elsewhere
too

as if somehow that would make
me see,
stay…

Now, it’s winter –
we’re making virgin
tracks
in snow
when the eye
of a raven catches
mine,
a gelid reminder
of these invisible scars –

the ley lines
that connect this place
to your passing

No longer 3

Image via http://www.sxc.hu

You and me,

we’re no longer three,

am I cracked and fading, a sepia-coloured memory?

oceans divide us,

and the years…

but your mettle

burns vivid as the desert ochre,

and your voice

beats ancient through my heart