Tuesday 28 February 2017

LOSING THE AGE OF PISCES - A Poem

TALKING ABOUT THE SEA,   Only twice have I lived more than an easy walking distance to the sea and though I had water around me in other forms there ( a river with a dam on it, or fish tanks ) I always felt dehydrated. So here is yet another sea poem from my book Words over the Water.








Losing the Age of Pisces.


As poets we wake and know we’ve heard the sea
in its loneliness reach out and into our dreams,

but its language cries out in the ozone words
of some unknown tongue – we try to find our way
back down through the fathoms of speech to hear

what the sea repeatedly says and wants us to hear:

the sea: wiffling tide-tales into mangroves and sedges
the sea: pulsing old wisdoms up inlets and canals
the sea: slapping wordy rhythms onto speeding hulls
the sea: beating out phrases onto rocks and sand

but even poets can’t reach into the language of sea;
yet we know on obscure coasts, sea-words are held
in the Methuselah tongues which are dying. Dying

and maybe already erased, by the world take-over

with an English language full of policy and commerce
which has no words to give the sea speech – it cannot
conceive of the surrounding sea being a crouching god

that speaks - nor care, how it strikes the sea dumb
with its ignorance. Our oceans shrunk to two words,

‘The Sea.’

People crowd to the cities. They fear the unknown.

No sea-words known for the man to name the feeling
of loss and sadness, which linger past ‘the little death,’
when the release of his inner sea is gifted over to her.

No sea-words known for the woman to name the depth
of grief, which lingers on when the amniotic sea
she carried within is lost as her sea-child is born.

The sea left speechless, circling our land in vain.
The sea left speechless, entwined in our DNA.

And the sea-tears fall alive from the people - the proof
the sea lives, always there, as it lifts and lowers tides,
both within them, and without them.

Wordless, the poets stumble on in their agony, urgent

to hear, to learn, to return the sea-words back to the people.

Copyright: lois e hunter.

Friday 24 February 2017

NEWS FROM THE ISLAND plus a poem

MEANDERINGS a WORK IN PROGRESS -  My latest poetry manuscript is now finished ahead of the delivery date I promised, and been delivered to the publishers. The new book's name has been approved and the cover has been designed, and everything now, as of today, signed - next thing to do is translate the paperwork for US tax laws.

I have got my dining table clear again and my brain can start thinking of something else after all the concentration needed over the past four months.
















7.30 a.m. and off to Mainland





So off to the Mainland to have lunch with friends, return Library books, get a haircut, and everything else I had put to one side.










 



Passenger on the Water Taxi


Why would a woman live alone on an island?
Hide herself away from love and friends?
She’d have to be a recluse, self-reliant, maybe
weird? – Or have a very strong belief
in being some sort of emerging artist?

Choose one or all, it can’t be easy.

She asks the same of herself – if she knew
she would answer – though she can’t
imagine anything other than island-life.

But I can tell you. It’s the boat in flight
away and back that holds her there:

her relaxed slump, her trance-blank stare
don’t reveal the involuntary rush of joy
flooding her limbs as her eyes drink
up the sea. in all its green blue-green moods

as if once again she’s following the call
of ancient memory like a migratory bird.




Thursday 9 February 2017

NEWS FROM THE ISLAND

SHARING FROM FACEBOOK

Introducing you to Lin Pardey - she is one of Kawau Island's well known 'famous people.'
Lin has written many books on world cruising in a timber yacht that her and her husband Larry built back in USA.

Lin Pardey added 3 new photos.
3 hrs
Talk about contrasts. Helped Ian Smith get his historic 18 footer ready for the Hobart wooden boat festival. Then off to government house for an official welcome. Worth being a bit formal just to see inside this historic building, the delicious oysters were a bonus. Then off for a delightful dinner with Roy Blow and friends. I'll be at historic 18 booth 10 to noon next three days.

Sunday 5 February 2017

NEWS FROM THE ISLAND





SUMMER HAS FINALLY ARRIVED and being a three day weekend the Island is jumping. People and boats everywhere. I went down to Maree's cafe at Mansion House and had an early decadent lunch of a big slice of her date cake, and with it being a super hot day, also a double size cold lemonade.













Then home to escape the heat of 35*C outside where there was no breeze but only 30*C inside the house where there was a sea breeze flowing through.

So far I am managing with the lowering 




water level in the tanks for parts of the gardens to thrive.