Long Tussocks Poems

I felt I’d been to hell and back before we reached the reedy flat,
where the cattle mobbed before we crossed the stream.
Old Harry called me over, taking off his battered hat
“This is where she died...

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I was working for Jack Daymond, a farmer,
who farmed livestock, potatoes and vines.
I s’pose he had over two hundred cattle.
The spuds and the grapes grew in lines. 

Oh gawd! Jack had me slaving ‘til sunset,
keeping...

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“Do you like yabbies?” Barry asked. I replied “Are you sick!
I’d just like to ask you; now is the Pope a Catholic?” …
So we headed off across the ranges, where Barry’s cousin Ray,
had a dam...

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ROOBOY

Between the spinifex and gibber, across the dry, hot sand,
Lenny sits as proud as punch with the leather straps in hand,
His roo it has a saddle and a bit between its teeth,
When he wants to...

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After a full day grubbing tussocks that infested public land,
in a popular reserve that our committee had long planned,
we relaxed and had a few drinks to help ease our aches and pains,
and we spoke on...

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Walking in sailor fields amongst the nettles picking blackberries,
the brambles cut deep savage the mind. Yet the bowl to be filled
the jam to be boiled the bread of hope to be flavourful,
the innocence of it...

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You are an enchanting cynosure
Beyond my naked eyes could see;
An unbounded briny exposure
Where tiny drops assemble sea;
Unpretentious blustery waves
Evolve from phenomenal ripples;
Flowing endless murmur cripples
Heart deep embedded peeves.

Tuneless prayers by lonely seamen
Resonate in salty humid...

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SUNLESS    IN   NORTH   SHIELDS 


It’s painful when the sea wind 
Drives  rain into the eyes
At the end of Yeoman Street, 
Where I waited so long for that...

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Snowfall so heavy in 'eighty-two
 reproduced a Christmas card view.
A biting wind swirled in one foot drifts
 over hanging in bridges..makeshift.

The fields flooded into skating rinks
 into which each footstep sinks,
cracking under body weight so...

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W  I  N  T  E  R
B  R  E  A  K  S
N  A  T  U  R  E
A  W A ...

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The Levels

The reeds, like tattered banners limply hung
From slender, ghost-like lances held on high,
Like ancient armies, waiting in the mist
To heed the call, a long lost battle cry.
A steel grey shroud lies thinly on the...

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From toothed alps to McKenzie High Country
  to hardwood alpine forest and fernland,
there rises the jewel Aoraki 
  out of the jagged ice age peaks so grand.
And polar winds at its rock face...

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Andean Pampas Grass grows in California.
Its Linnaean binomial is Cortaderia jubata.
This noxious weed disperses far and wide.
With tall stalks and inflorescences, it has nothing to hide.
As an ornamental plant native to South America,
it was introduced...

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twitching noses 
in tussocks
      of awakened primroses

rummaging on hazel boles
hibernating mammals 
poke from the holes

leafless hedgerows 
       where buds now form 
a carpet of...

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