Poem read to Bluegum Sangha

On Tuesday night I gave a talk at Bluegum Sangha in North Sydney, and I enjoyed meeting the group very much. As part of the talk, I read this poem.  This was my response, in 2001, to the invasion of Iraq.

Wyn’s Walk

When Baghdad                        Washington

want to split apart the world

uncurl yourself

push away the layers of litter

the soil burying you

walk forth

what lives together on the Newnes Plateau

after the backburn?

Fungi, large creamy mushrooms

floating through the road surface,

small  brown dots soft upon the crunching black

buff frills on the other side of a fallen log,

orange termite houses,

burnt trees, new growth on their black trunks

like burgundy ballgowns spilling out,

the rough feel of my friend’s  hand

as we walk along singing Jack and Jill,

my daughter leaping up the glinting pagodas,

the tops of the coachwood trees down in the canyon

Be given cake                        chocolate

fresh-brewed coffee            muffin with rasberries in it

Stride out

to find the canyon

enter it through a hole in the rock

inside find rock walls holding  like elder brothers

a hush of leaves           

thick-layered fire fodder

a purple flower with a yellow heart

an overhang for  a wombat                 

find peace

the conviction that rocks are alive

Lie beside a dry creek bed

look up

into the tea-trees -  flood detritus?

Abandoned finches’ nests  says Wyn

American bombs

are about to fall on Baghdad

our leaders are crazed

today I can do nothing more about it.

Some of us would like to argue

but we restrain ourselves,

Tara is drooping so we sing

This Old Man

and There was an Old Lady –

on the way home Don falls asleep.

Diana Levy