gingerbread houses (without gingerbread)
made from materials
from the open minimart:
2 packets of biscuits
just-add-water Royal Icing
a box of food colouring
a bag each of M&Ms
and Sour Patch Kids
and (most importantly)
imagination
look what emerges:
sunflower gardens
Twister games
swimming pools
snowmen
Christmas trees
busy minds hands hearts
3 sugary scenes
and one yummy new memory
at Green Cape Light
I go looking for a light in the darkness
even on days the sun shines full blast
look up – magic everywhere
today: a wombat scratching his back with a lighthouse
my happy healthy mum watching an echidna
my family ringed by waves
thrusting our heads into the center
of a crystal lens
learning how to turn
a flicker of flame
into a broad-beamed beacon
to keep drifting souls
(especially ours)
away from the rocks
anywhere in the world
solstice, mountains
on almost-the-longest-day
we walk in sun for hours
scoop snow with our bare hands
cradle an unexpected bit of home
that puts December right
our sons confirm
we are mountain people
at home in the big bare peaks
where you easily see where you’ve been
and have a good view of where you’re going
here you can read the weather well
just by glancing up into unobstructed blue
all the way round the rough horizon
the high point of the peak is unequivocal:
you’ve absolutely reached your goal
standing there silently
we trace the ribbon of trail
all the way back home
another climate crisis
dappled sun on sidewalk goes orange
and our eyes jerk up to sky –
that eerie fire light
filtered through smoke again –
I see the wavelength change before I smell it
and my heart tenses and stomach sinks
we are meant to run from this
not choke on smoke summer after summer
Colorado Alaska Sydney Medan –
wherever we go
the flames are there:
lodgepole cones explode
eucalypts ignite
jungle succumbs to palms
and now the whole fat squashed disk
of this country/continent
glows garnet red on the heat map
the only cool blue left
is boiling ocean
the men in suits clamp their ears shut
to not hear the crackle
to ignore the girl in braids
who demands they be bold by being humble
admit they’ve upset a balance
put too much black coal on the ledger
run everything into the red
red panda in the sprinkler
his sleek black stomach
begs a caress
cinnamon coat goes scruffy
in the spray
upturned mouth stretches
a gleeful wet face
into a weak smile
while sparks of sun
splash everywhere
opera house
shells returning the sound of the sea
echoing the breath
trumpeting the news
cradling pearls of reflected human forms
each made from the uncomfortable itch
of grit worried around until
layer by slow painstaking layer
a round rainbow-hued orb
smoothed out the rough patch
& turned injury into art
city trees
trees are different here, massive
sometimes they have memories
they’re big bulky beings to be reckoned with
spared from any axe or plow
sentries sentinels sentient
and their crowns that peer around
make an acre of shade
not-so-distant sea
the unmistakable blue band
of watery bowl beyond
the this-and-that of land
is even better when
dashed here-and-there
with white hyphens
of bubbling surf
