Three tankas for mother

1. It’s Carnival Week.

Also mother’s funeral.

See how the flags are flapping.

She would have enjoyed it all,

celebration and sorrow.


2.  I found her name tapes –

one way to remember her.           

Seems like yesterday

I was sewing them on socks

and humming her favourite songs.


3.  ‘Clair de Lune’ it was.

I had to fade it for her,

get the timing right.

Fading is what mother did.

We won’t hear her sing again.

Lyn Browne

July 2013

Dieppe Tank

'Why is that there, Mummy?' 


Nose pressed to tourist bus window,

Inquisitive mind, a need to know.


On the sidewalk outside the Armoury ...

Why is it there for all to see?


'It's a tank, from the war.'


He didn't ask 'What's it for?'

He knows about machines of war.

He knows about things that go ka-boom!! and ka-pow!! 


'Mummy, why is it there now?'


And then, as if on cue,

I saw the sign he couldn't read.

Dieppe – 8 August – 1942. 


Should one try to explain what this tank had seen –

the bloody slaughter that was Dieppe?

Surely it's time to let go ... and yet

This child wants to know, in 2013.


'Why, mummy, why?'

I waited. There was no reply.


J Bandidt  ©  August, 2013

BELOW THE CREST

Below the crest

a brown land stretched,

no trees or any fauna caught the eye.

Held in this time I let the scene dissolve,

replaced by forests, swamps and life

in my imagination.

No man was on the earth that could betray

the system’s great ecology,

but die it did,

and all the creatures too,

so many million years ago.

How arrogant are we to think this earth,

this eloquent creation,

will dance upon our tune?

This is our time, no doubt,

and man’s existence will bequeath a record

just like those fossil bones of megasaurs

who walked upon this ground

long before we existed.

©Deanne Lister

18th August 2013

On the jump-up near Winton


 
LOOKING FOR BUSTARDS


Alone, but not alone,

I am the earth, the trees,

the warm soft breeze

in this fantastic place.

The silence has a voice

that lifts my soul

to soar in golden rays

exulting in the joy

of simply being.

©Deanne Lister

14th August 2013

Walking at the end of a small airfield deep in the country just outside Townsville