house to let

on the path
a crumpled snakeskin
house to let

Summer vegetables

The season is later here than in my hometown.  By now the zucchini vines have outgrown their roots and the fruit fly has discovered the reddening capsicum in the north west.  Here the tomatoes are just ready to pick, the chillis are sharp and the beans are sprouting overnight.

tomato

warm from the vine

the taste of summer

The Haiku Journey

I've been rereading Clark Strand's wonder-ful Seeds from a Birch Tree: Writing Haiku and the Spiritual Journey again.  This morning on my walk I emptied my mind, as he suggested, and as well as I could with three dogs all tugging in different directions, and kept my eyes wide open.  I paused to watch two eastern rosellas squabbling in a bird bath and marvelled at the kangaroos' ability to keep perfectly still when they sensed us approaching.  Try as I might I couldn't find a haiku in either situation.  No flash of insight for me.
I sat in my lounge with my breakfast coffee when I got home and gazed across the paddocks, dry and brown as summer drags on.  Over the hills in the distance crept the blue haze portending another blazing hot day.

blue haze

creeps over the hills

summer stretches on

3lights

I'm working on a a haiku string for the next 3LIGHTS edition.  The theme is music so I guess it's right up my alley! If you have suitable work for the new online edition see:
http://3lights.wordpress.com/submissions/

 I'd recommend a visit to 3Lights beautiful gallery of poetry at
http://www.threelightsgallery.com/foyer.html

A slip of paper
and a moment's silence
in the bare grey room.
His face empties.
The nor-westerly blasts
the loose-leaved eucalypt
beyond the window pane,
shrivelling all in its path.

gum branch

gum branch cracks
the summer afternoon
baby screams

Which are the mistakes and which the art?

"Creativity is allowing ourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep" Scott Adam

Talk about words that come along just as you're ready to throw the whole artistic thing in... This quote in Jacqui Lofthouse's motivational tips caught my fancy as I was in the middle of a morass of mistakes, far from the creative genius Scott Adam was thinking of!
Jacqui's blog:
http://stubbornworld.typepad.com/the_writing_coach/

Piano Lessons

Like Anna Goldsworthy I had lessons from a continental pianist with a gift for teaching soul as well as brain and hand. Unlike Anna I didn't aspire to or even dream of the concert platform. My teacher, Miss Feledi, fled Hungary after the war and washed up in Sydney. Like Mrs Sivan she could change the mood of a piece from within. Under her fingers the piano keys could evoke joy, melancholy, dreaminess or grief from the same sequence of notes. To demonstrate the touch required for a certain passage she would grasp my hand and sweep her fingers from my shoulder down to my fingertips. On another day we would caress the keys and 'sing' with our softly curled fingers.
Anna's book is a tribute to Mrs Sivan and her pianistic and teaching skill but it is also a merciless expose of her own growth from ignorant child through peer-governed adolescence to over-confident university student. Her gaffes as well as her triumphs are chronicled and dissected. She reveals the doubts and obsessions of a high achieving girl and how she ultimately chooses her love of the piano over the other paths open to her.
I was returned to the root of my love of music and making music and wish I had known Miss Feledi in my adult years. So much would make sense now that as a school girl I only dimly understood.

steam rising

steam rising
after summer rain
false hopes

face

face
in the crowd
a crack in time

Window on the world

Coco contemplates the meaning of life, the universe and all those pebbles...

In the Company of Rilke

I'm savouring Stephanie Dowrick's latest book "In the Company of Rilke" a morsel at a time. Rilke's poetry has long sharpened my awareness of the mysteries around us and this meditation on his relevance to 21st century life uncovers even greater depths to Rilke than I could ever imagine.