Idea of Mother

Who taught you
to drink from that cup?
The cup itself
or the idea of it?
The milk or the thirst?
Who shared breath’s
lesson? her perfume
or the lungs’ pink bellows?
Who needs to learn
how to cook
when they can sing a roundelay?
(delay delay).
She is the sort of mother
who holds buttercups
under your chin,
the sort who tickles
until it hurts.

** 

GAUDÌ

Preferring the parabola to the circle,
……….the helix to a square, Antoni Gaudí
……….……….allows the cheese to melt over
the bones of the Casa Milà like lava
……….cooling through the streets of Pompei.
……….……….Ding ding, ding ding.
The dripping fish scales of his Barcelona roof
……….tiles, tessellated mosaics of park benches,
……….……….these dreams assemble while the dreamer,
him, schoolyard dunce, resists
……….interview. The columns and portico
……….……….swirls making the air tangible. An
empty museum but for a ceiling of perforated
……….oak through which burnished stars shiver.
……….……….Sentient doorways, arches interlocking,
a twisted bannister smooth as an oiled tusk.
……….All serve homage to the nerve in the wood.
……….……….A balustrade as much like a wave bombarding
the shore as its pragmatic purpose.
……….The illusion of space, himself hidden in it.
……….……….Even the humble chimney pots aspire
to a better world. A snail’s revelation
……….floating in stone, a tortoise-shaped
……….……….plinth bearing the universe on its back.
The gargoyles and grottoes where God
……….chisels away, buffing the marble walls
……….……….with his hand. The brick vaulting
of the crypts warm as a hive’s hum.
……….The acoustics resound. Slowly
……….……….the life of the city subsumes him.
His city. A spiral staircase, pure as a nautilus.
……….The view over the rooftops towards the sea.
……….……….Ding ding, ding ding.
The four thin spears of the unfinished cathedral,
……….La Sagrada Família, drawing the eye upward,
……….……….each spire topped by a precarious sun.
Him, backing away to admire the scale,
……….lost in celestial vision – that scruffy
………………..old man who does he think he is?…
get out of the road – ding
……….ding, ding ding – didn’t
……….……….hear God’s tramcar coming.

**

Hammock Music

Each dawn and every dusk
a pair of kookaburras come to lay claim
to the small acreage of their estate,
mapped out with a complicated pattern
of mirth. Arrow straight they dive to investigate
the earth where I have turned the soil
in the act of farming on a very small scale.
Me and my hand trowel.
All the world seems far away,
and I am grateful for the carefully
contained patch, defined by sound,
where birds still live.

*

Is instinct memory?
After heat of the day mist rolls in
like a snail trailing a silver cloak.
The powder-puffball of a female
Superb Fairy Wren, itself green
as faded billiard cloth, dances
in the thin twigs for its supper.

*

Wattle birds also locate us.
Their raucous squawk.
The garden’s geography of home.
The restaurant of xanthorrhoea spears
rising over clumps of agapanthus, prolific
with imported arrogance.These too help
keep us in touch with the lazy swing
of the hammock, the evolution
of my own sweet plot.

*

The life of birds is savage and mine,
at the mercy of mosquitoes, no less so.
I remember watching one wedge-tailed
eagle tear the heart out of a car-struck
wallaby, its entrails crimson as a fist
of grapes. Its partner keeping sentry
from the plinth of a strainer post
waiting its turn, as if to make a speech,
before lifting into the air’s citadel.

**

‘MAKING THE AIR VISIBLE’
…………………………………………–  Rosalie Gascoyne

making the air visible
the heat of food in the bowel
the instinct of evaporating water
wood constrained by paint
hills freed by order
bones by varnish when the flesh has gone
dusk infected by dawn
paradox creeping into the lungs
like pollen into the oxygen tent
the ruined crops marching across
the paddocks towards us
a river’s ripples,
before the landscape of the sky
puts us in our place.

.

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Mark O’Flynn has published seven collections of poetry, most recently Undercoat (Liquid Amber Press, 2022) and Einstein’s Brain (Puncher & Wattmann). His novels include The Last Days of Ava Langdon, (UQP, 2016), Grassdogs (Harper Collins, 2006) and The Forgotten World (HC, 2013).