A Night of Hot Quirky Shows 2019, Cygnet, Tasmania

A Night of Hot Quirky Shows

The theme was heat! I read this poem...

FAITH OF OUR FATHERS

The gully, a thurible

wafting bushfire smoke;

the smoke pungent, acrid.

Down in Ad-or-ation falling…

we used to sing…

this great sacrament Divine…

while the priest and his entourage filled the aisle

with the embroidered satin and pungent stink of godly things.

The smoke from scarlet-resined gums,

from purple-podded wattle,

from dry bracken and dogwood

cleaving to the towns down south

like burrs to an old grey blanket.

No one can tell where it’s coming from,

so thick and low-lying is the somnolent smoke.

We closet ourselves inside the house

while a million smoke-crazy midges

batter the windows.

At five minutes past ten, the rains begin,

staccato, percussive,

(a benediction!)

then fluid, a chrism,

a million small, finite heavens

sliding on the roof.

Falling, bouncing off,

making runnels in the corrugations,

on and on,

steady and strong,

cleansing the air.

I bring the washing indoors.

It is flecked with white ash

the size of the mosquitoes that

lazily, slothfully,

patrol us in the night.

The rain falls,

softening sometimes…

but on and on it falls,

dousing the terrible flames

we cannot even see.

Tumbleweed Lullaby

A chipped ceramic pot of dune,

faded blue and white,

sits like a scruffy buddha

at the foot of my disheveled bed.

Purple grass, untidy with seed;

tiny purple daisies,

their blooms corrugated,

making dry stipples;

sherds of water-softened glass

littering the soil.

 

On nights when there is no moon,

the threadbare canvas of my room…

Silent gulls carved from pine

could almost blink.

A crooked feather might ruffle.

Heat, and the thrum of misplaced frogs

in the sedges;

two dingy windows ajar

letting in an algae-blue light;

the open sky above the big blackwood

the colour of a breath,

sweet and awry and unhurried.

Sometimes, the night air was a lazy drug

when I needed it most-

the night air rocked me with a musky sleep,

cradled me on a sweeping arc,

levitated me on a current of lusciousness.

Bare arms above the covers,

I dozed, dazed by the snail-trail

silvered touch of the cool.

 

Kookaburras, there must be three!

They incant at the unripe greening of the sky,

their mantra filling the blackwood tree with ink.

The geese up the way rehearse

and trumpet their evening prayers,

where they all squat to face their feather-flurried ground.

 

Night falls, crashing into a thousand silent pieces.

Now, all sounds are ricochets

within the creaking walls of this house;

now, the whole world is held inside

the windows’ weird reflections.

Taylor Camp, Hippie Utopia, 1969