summer shower

Soft grey powder lifts gently, drifting slowly earthbound to fill and blur footprints. A hot lazy breeze puffs dust over already burdened leaves, hiding the beauty of the foliage in a pale coat. Distances shimmer. Ants scurry, building levees, oblivious of the heat.
Their activity telling tales of changes too subtle for eyes blinded by technology.
The breeze droops to oblivion, unable to sustain itself in the heat.
All is still.
A furnace wind surfs over the tree tops, sucking energy from all living things in its path. Once drooping leaves begin a crazed dance in the wildness of the wind. twigs and dry grass lift and fly. A lone bird battles the rising wind, dipping and swaying, frantically beating its fragile wings, desperate to reach a safe haven.
Majestic white mountains begin to fill the painful blue of the skies. The wind leaps up and shoves them around like a half crazed sheep dog let loose in the flock. Thunder rumbles deep in the belly of the beast.
Lightning tears the sky. Thunder roars a full throated defiance at the wind, shaking the earth. Bloated drops plod heavily on parched soil.
swifter, smaller drops follow, cascading in glistening silver curtains, obscuring all from sight.
The scent of the soil, drinking thirstily, is rich and metallic, coating the tongue and nostrils and etching itself into memory.
Diamonds sparkle on leaf tips. Cleansed and coll their beauty revealed, the leaves show exotic blues, antipodean greens. Paint splashed trunks of pink and white, grey or red, smooth and slender, reflected in puddles at their base. Double rainbows splash bright across retreating grey cloud banks.
Steam rises wraith like, dancing eerily atop rapidly evaporating pools of water.
A lone bird splashes in a shallow pool, fluffs and shakes its feathers dry. Long grooming strokes then it spreads its wings and lifts into the eucalyptus scented air.

typing the old fashioned way

Brother came up from the neighbourhood house
to help me out.
What a louse!
Cost me money, got me stressed,
Stacked all the letters
What a mess!

Iona's brother came to stay
I wish that he would go away
He wouldn't take up the slack
Caused me quite a lot of flack
Seventies orange, past his day
Made everything fade to grey

My old brother is on the floor
He wont work anymore
The kids play with him some days
They poke and they punch him and play with his
keys, but mostly he hides
behind the door
'cause don't work, anymore.

A new friend is on the way, coming to stay
who wont fade to grey.
Will clean up the mess
Will work fast and hard
Worth all the money
move over brother here comes my...
computer. :)



all my typewriters in the 90's were 'brothers'. My first real computer with internet access happened in 1999 and the 'brothers' all went out to the great typewriter reject pile.

this love

You're hard
I'm soft
I'm found
You're lost
This love, what cost
This love, what cost

I was hard before
but I saw much more
opened up my door
you fell on my floor
This love, what cost
This love, what cost

It started out
full of hopeful doubt
but the doubt won out
now the hope has gone
this love
this love

Now you're on my floor
Like you were before
and I close my door
Now I'm hard
your loss
this love, what cost
this love, what cost
this love

99 words

Micheal Angelo introduced himself.
My party enthusiasm burst forth in a smile.
"Do you still paint?"
"I used to. I will again!"
"This life?"
"What, you don't believe in reincarnation?"
"I haven't been there yet."
"Oh I see." he smiled and laughed out loud. "What do you do?"
"Write."
"Tell me about the moon."
I waxed lyrical.
"I bow to your superior talents." he quipped and left the room.
Had I come on too strong?
"Michael Angelo?" I called. "Hello? Hello?"
He was gone.
I switched off my computer, disappointed.

Now I am writing in a course again it seems I need to find more outlets for my skills. it is good to be setting aside specific writing time and also very good to be focussed on writing as my profession. it will happen this time. I spent a goodly part of last night going through old folders and finding odd pieces of prose, short stories and poetry that I had forgotten i even wrote. i found a quirky poem about typewriters being superseded by the computer and I might type that in. The most interesting thing that occurred was my 14 year old son said he had never read anything I had written so how could he know I was a writer. I gave him my first ever manuscript and waited anxiously as he read it. he didn't move a muscle and was extrordinarily quiet for him. When he finished I asked how he found it and with an enormous grin on his face said in a pretend mocking tone...'this is complete rubbish you should not consider giving up your day job..." by which I realized he was giving me his highest praise and later expressed how cruel I must have been to have given his brother only a chapter at a time when I wrote it. High praise from my hardest critics.