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| Farm Cove |
Walking through Chinatown on
my way to teach the WEA class,
people are eating breakfasts which smell like dinner. I pass a restaurant
called “Eating World”. After the theory part of class, we make our way to Circular Quay. I try to imagine the beginnings of
English settlement here, in this tight curve of bay – I’ve been reading “The
Fatal Shore” by Robert Hughes. Over in the next bay where we're going, the settlers attempted to
grow their food. Nowadays it’s the gracious foreshore of the Botanic Gardens.
Farm Cove now:
a catamaran
girls shrieking on deck
I gather my students in a
grove of bamboo, where we’re a little sheltered from the cold wind. Shelley had remembered from the morning - “Learn
about ….a bamboo plant from a bamboo plant”. Basho
party music
the winds swallows
a chunk of it
The poets walk around writing
– they walk slowly. I wander over to a man who is harvesting some kind of fruit
from a tree. He is African. He tells me that this tree is a relative of the
coffee plant, and that its young leaves if chewed are good for …was it
arthritis? He tells me the name and I write it down – its common name is khat ( who knows if that is the right spelling). I have a taste, it's almost
fruity.
I wish the poets would walk
faster. Then I could warm up.
cold again
my arms in this thin jacket
leaden October
But there are so many
delights, not the least of which is people-watching. Graham wrote a senryu ( satirical take on human affairs) about a woman we saw at Circular Quay. Here are my senryus:
in pink gumboots
running to the next puddle
Mummmeeeeeee!
a bare shoulders display -
flicked back by the cold wind,
her hair
Is this a senryu, below, or a haiku?
I’m not sure.
one minute detour...
given to
the Asian gardens
Only one minute?
We had two rounds of sharing our work. The best was the sharing in the cafĂ©, with cake and hot chocolate and tea. So that’s what they were thinking about! This was my best effort:
We had two rounds of sharing our work. The best was the sharing in the cafĂ©, with cake and hot chocolate and tea. So that’s what they were thinking about! This was my best effort:
lotuses arise
from stinking black mud
moorhen is at ease
