Feathers

I don’t feel like meat tonight.

Red or white.

Perhaps bananas and ice cream

Though I remember what my son once said about ice cream,

How it’s made from the feathers of birds.

I’ve never felt right about it since.

I’m afraid to look it up in case it’s true

And I’ll feel even worse.

But ice cream feels right.

It’s a hot evening. I’ve had eggs and bacon for lunch

So something soft seems just the ticket..

I just wish I never heard that about ice cream,

That the thought would just grow wings and fly away.

pic courtesy of Pinterest by ehow.com

The Castle

Somewhere

Somewhere remote

somewhere bespoke

for those

who practice civility

a castle you can row out to

a stronghold

of equanimity

no messy emotions

no urge to outdo

a castle with a billy goat

nestled in a sea

of robin egg blue.

pic courtesy of Pinterest

Evie

People walking up and down ,

walking off their sore heads from the night before,

mothers with their daughters, mothers with no one,

people locked on their mobiles,

missing the jaunty waves,

the graffiti of gull talk

and that gorgeous fluffy white spitz from McLaren Vale walking his owner

what’s his name? I ask.

Her, he corrects me. Evie.

Ahh I say after the song.

That’s right, he says. Evie, Parts 1,2 and 3.

And we give each other the thumbs up —

not many people know that —

& could start reminiscing when we saw Little Stevie & the Easybeats

but Evie is keen to get moving

just like Little Stevie who couldn’t keep still;

And above us, because

there’s a strong breeze,

there’s wind surfers flying around

like a dazzle of butterflies,

The Three Most Important Things

The man who looks like an aging, portly Dick Van Dyke

wheels his walker towards me

in the Aged Care Centre’s library.

Are you a new resident? he asks.

No, I laugh, just having a quiet read while my partner visits

a resident.

Who are you?

I’m the Welcome Ambassador, he says,

brandishing his badge.

I welcome new residents.

I cheer them up. Show films in the hall.

‘Life of Brian’, ‘Carry on ‘ films, that sort of thing.

Get them to concentrate on the important things of life

when they’re down.

How do you do that? I ask.

I tell them a story about the time I almost died.

That sounds cheery, I say.

Would you like to hear it?

If I said no, would that stop you? I say.

He chuckles and gets on with it.

 Well, I had a heart attack ten years ago.

They thumped my heart with a ,,, what do you call it?

A defibrillator?

Yes, that’s it. I was between life and death. It could have gone either way. Do you know what they asked me?

No.

They asked me what the three most important things in my life were

and that I should think about them.”

What did you say? I ask.

Doritos, Tim Tams and cappuccinos.

[Had I heard right?]

What about your wife? I ask.

Yes, her too, of course.

But they were the first three things I thought of.

And are they still?

Yes. They keep me going.

What about your wife?

Yes. Her too.

So, he says, bending forward, eyes querying me.

So what are the three most important things

in your life?

Not Tim Tams, I say. Not Doritos. I like dark chocolate. Red wine.

My kids, I add. Them too.

That’s what you concentrate on whenever you feel like … you know.

Yes, I do,

I thank the Welcome Ambassador as he shuffles off back to his office.

He could do with losing some weight.

Dairy Dreams

As soon as I began reading it, ‘The Ice Cream Palace,’ I began to have dairy dreams.

Don’t you know it is forbidden, I said. I banished you from my diet years ago.

But the dream  pulled up to me like a Mr. Whippy van chiming.

What could I do?

I settled back into my vanilla-and–pistachio armchair and read Gianni Rodari’s deliciously delightful tale.

My eyes greedily licked every sentence.

I scooped the words up with pleasure.

They melted in my mouth.

The residue ran down my chin in rainbow rivulets.

The Beasts’ Revenge

Those rosemary & garlic sausages

we bought

to ‘beef up’ the barbie

in case the eye fillets weren’t enough

were beginning

to stink out the fridge:

‘the beasts revenge’ ;

so when we took them to your place and you declared

your barbie was ‘lamb intolerant’

we hit a snag

so when I said, I’m going to have to put them in your fridge

I thought you would say,

my fridge is ‘lamb intolerant’

but you never did;

in spite of those setbacks

we had a pretty good evening

though when we left we forgot to take home

the snags

so we hope you enjoy them

in one form or another

and no, we do not need them back

The Happy Caddie

It’s okay being a caddie

tagging along with the team

light as a butterfly

nothing to prove

floating along the lazy rhythms

of the afternoon,

the dappled sunlight,

the bodyguard gums,

the cheeky creek bed waiting

to gobble up golf balls;

you’re nimble on yr feet,

jovial as a parrot

keeping the banter going

handing out irons

as a waiter would drinks,

planting the flag after putting is done

like Neil and Buzz on the moon

*pic courtesy of Wikipedia

A Bit of Love

Some of my poems end up like this,

bashed, broken , bent beyond repair,

car wrecks,

the ones you don’t usually see

in the showroom

of my blog,

the ones abandoned in the junkyard

out the back,

but sometimes I remember a part that worked

when the rest of the poem didn’t

and I go down & look for it amongst

all that scrap metal

of words

misshapen phrases

 give it a polish, an oil change

a bit of love

& fit it into the poem I’m working on now

so the old gives vigor

to the new.

It works every time.

Ambrosia Lite

The sun peeps behind a cloud

I hope it is not too loud

The swallows doze in the trees

I’m in dreams up to my shiny knees

tweedledum and tweedledee

the honey-eater swings on the trapeze

of the scrawny twig

& I have another swig

of ambrosia lite

and this poem is shining much too bright

unmoored again I chase links

but my cottontail heart shrinks

• image courtesy of Wikipedia

My WP Friends: an Ode

.

I love my community of bloggers.

They’re fun.

I love them

Each and everyone.

There’s Hobbo, Beth,

Eden, the Don,

dear old Ed

& a Coyote name John.

There’s Chel. also,

formerly Chelsea,

a big fat can of worms

Little Charmer’s pithy poetry.

There’s eob2

with her eyes of blue

her mystical poems

their music too.

Karen, of course,

her Yard Sale of Thoughts

teasing us with ruminations

her imagination has wrought.

Then there’s foresty Ulle

what can we say of him?

A man , sharply observant

with a taste for whim.

Then like a shooting star,

there’s our phantasmagoric friend:

David, jester and artificer

on a trip that will never end.

Not forgetting Jewish Young Professional

and Sarcastic Fringe Head

like my mum used to say,

you wouldn’t for quids be dead.

So to my fellow bloggers,

one and all,

each day spent with you

is a real cyber carnival.