Something beginning with E

Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.¹

Ponies in the fog

I’m digging a load of sheep manure into the vege patch when J calls over the fence, I thought you were writing a Sit Spot?! I yell back, I am, this is what writing looks like.

The afternoon is pink and purple and soft. Two white faced herons rise from the marsh of low tide and wheel, then, calling to each other, pass overhead. I start weeding a garden bed. When I straighten I see J down on the edge of the paddock. He’s got his fencing gear in the back of the buggy. He’s shadowed by Geoffrey and Errol, one shaggy, the other golden. He’s checking out what fencing needs to be done before we can get to planting some trees. A pair of galahs flash pink and grey and land in a huge gum where they seem to have won ascendency against the corellas. They’re busy working away at a hole in the tree. I’m delighted at their homemaking. A magpie peers at me from the lemon scented gum. I want to ask, Where is your nest? but it’s too forward, instead I say, hello, we’re back.

*

We’ve been on the big island. Caught a plane, hired a car. Driven out to the place that will always hold the word home for me. We’d been to celebrate a significant birthday for a woman who, nineteen years ago adopted me and my children into her family (as she does to every vulnerable thing), and became my friend.

J and I drove the familiar road and I felt the ghost of my 31 year-old self. Oh how old she was. I give her a quiet nod of approval at her courage for leaving the certainty of a job at Sydney Uni and taking her children out of the city.

I am not going to tell you about the party. Oh, okay, a tiny sketch. It was generous, relaxed, beautiful. I cried as my friend’s sisters and daughters spoke. Then laughed when her husband did not quite manage to pull off the speech he’d written in the tractor earlier in the day.

The day after the party we sat on couches, nursed cups of coffee, ate leftover chicken sandwiches and shared memories. My friend’s husband recounted driving my youngest back from Coonabarabran after the horse extravaganza that was a rite of passage for everyone (think multiple days camping, many events, many horses, children of all ages, cold, and just epic in every way). They played Eye Spy. My friend’s husband takes this game seriously. He spent long kilometres saying, can I still see it? Yes, crowed C from the back seat, STILL? my friend’s husband would demand, YES! My friend’s husband gave up (he never gives up). What is it that you can see that starts with E?

EVERYTHING shouted C.

My friend’s husband recounts this scene as if it was yesterday, as if my son was not 21 years-old and in another country, as if he was still 6 years-old sitting on the back seat having the sheer audacity to see everything.

Here’s another one.

Once, when my daughter was maybe nine years old and at her first pony club camp (a big deal) my birthday friend (who whispers to animals and the universe) on hearing that my daughter’s precious pet cockatiel had escaped, drove my daughter back from camp and the two of them walked through the paddocks calling and calling until they heard Poppy screeching back at them from a tall gum. My friend explained to my tear-stained daughter; the hand-raised cockatiels get up so high they are too scared to come down, and even though they can fly perfectly well, and even though they want to come back home, they can’t work out how to get out of the sky. So the two of them stood there and called and the little cockatiel worked its way down the gum tree from one wispy branch to the next, until it was close enough for my daughter to climb up, to reach her hand out and have the precious bird hop onto her finger and from there climb to her shoulder, and nestle under my her ear.

In my notebook these lines by Eric Gamalinda

You've seen them come and go, 
the beautiful flaming ones. 
In this city whose streets
no longer confuse you, renewal comes 
as a matter of choice. Although

it is impossible to ascertain
its exact coordinates, home is that place 
you are continually born into, 
that you leave with no regret, 
that grows smaller each time you return. 

And so, we drove away.

We left Sydney as the sky pinked into dawn.

It’s past lunchtime by the time our tyres rattled over the grid.

Look, I point at the wattle, it’s been threatening to bloom for weeks and suddenly it’s bright.

MM

Poem of the Week

I have miraculous daffodils outside the kitchen door, I love them. I love this poem by Jennifer Chang too².

Dorothy Wordsworth

The daffodils can go fuck themselves.
I’m tired of their crowds, yellow rantings
about the spastic sun that shines and shines
and shines. How are they any different

from me?  I, too, have a big messy head
on a fragile stalk.  I spin with the wind.
I flower and don’t apologize. There’s nothing
funny about good weather. Oh, spring again,

the critics nod. They know the old joy,
that wakeful quotidian, the dark plot
of future growing things, each one
labeled Narcissus nobilis or Jennifer Chang.

If I died falling from a helicopter, then
this would be an important poem. Then
the ex-boyfriends would swim to shore
declaiming their knowledge of my bulbous

youth. O, Flower, one said, why aren’t you
meat? But I won’t be another bashful shank.
The tulips have their nervous joie-de-vivre,
the lilacs their taunt. Fractious petals, stop

interrupting me with your boring beauty.
All the boys are in the field gnawing raw
bones of ambition and calling it ardor. Who
the hell are they? This is a poem about war.

Other things:

I listened to Ruth Ozeki on process and character and belief. If you’re in the middle of a project and can’t see the end, go for a walk and listen to Ruth. Also, Anne Carson being stupendous in LRB. She has Parkinson’s and is writing through it. THIS is about cook books, not the US election (mostly). And finally, Slightly Foxed editor Gail Pirkis’ Dartmouth home is as swoony as you would expect.

More things:

Next weekend I’m at Bendigo - two events - one on Saturday and one on Sunday talking with Matthew Evans about his new book, Milk.

Then Port Fairy (Sept 6-8th) will be a joy. Our writing group will be sharing a tiny insight into how we support each other on the Friday night and then I’m talking memoir with Hilary Harper, Nova Weetman and Mary Garden on Saturday 7th.

And then on Sunday Sept 8th there’s a Stella Day Out at Curban Hall, which is going to require some travel tetrising from me. But fingers and toes crossed, I’ll make it.

Have a good week Sitters

mm

1. Rumi

2. Jennifer Chang, Dorothy Wordsworth