These are the stones
that ground dull nails and sharpened talons,
they have slid under mountains of ice and fire,
are polished by the grind of a glacial momentum.
The stones endure now as layers of motion
sealed within catchments of stillness;
some are wind-tools shaped by a tireless chisel,
other’s glint with a history and crushed starlight.
The river has left signs of its scouring trace.
I turn a stone over –
look backward to a molten world,
imagining the imperceptible burnishing
of such relentless forces.
Thought is a fish out of water here,
mind at one with the ice floes momentum,
a witness to the passing away of all density,
the defeat of every bulwark in the stream
of this rivering,
this endless whittle of creation.
Categories:
catchments, poetry,
Form: Free verse
Drainage lines dissect river catchments
Carved by water flowing down to sea
Recycling raindrops sucked from ocean
Carried in puffs of clouds to highlands
To fall as rain feeding river flows
Sustaining life that thrives in currents
In rapids, trickles, waterfalls, swirls.
Life adapted to flow, stir and surge
That replenishes oxygen, food
In drips, squirts, spurts, splash, currents and flows.
Pulsing flow of rivers down drainage
Mirrors our blood flow circulation.
Categories:
catchments, river,
Form: Verse
I could have toyed around
With the floating currency
But I stared far away into Africa
And gravely sailed along
Thinking nothing at all
Of the world of solitude
Neither expecting a judgment
Nor indeed an attachment
I was without company
For the follies of mankind
And the poor relations of misery
Contrived to make her unkind:
‘Tis then I remembered
My first day in church
And the first sermon delivered
On the first human catch
I left nothing for history
But took gifts from the creator
To do service to my country
Lest neglected, she flounder
And lose her character at every word
That becomes her unseemly corpse
And my sojourn life’s topsy
True, the years that followed
The exile’s estrangement
Had plundered continents
Of his rare earlier wisdom
But as the streams flowed
Into the humane catchments
They bore native sentiment
Of love for his kingdom.
Categories:
catchments, absence,
Form: Free verse
Monitoring twenty years confirms
Having good vegetation about
Helped to protect Australia’s rivers
From ravages of climate and drought
The condition of streams and rivers
Based on agricultural impacts
Caused modification of catchments
And altered hydrological cracks
Australia has set the example
Use wood for rehabilitation
Wood now plays a major role in streams
Improvement without limitations
Categories:
catchments, nature,
Form: Quatrain