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A poem Before Breakfast

Early morning call, palest dawn creeping
Another grandson, arms held high for freedom
Time to start the latest day
To share the wonder, new eyes
Bright with promise of delight

And all day long he’s running back and forth
Between his loved ones and the world beyond
Lost in his moment, ardent
Explorer, poet, comic
Lovely boy, we watch in awe

21st May 2009, Hounoux, for Luca

Just Two More Sleeps

Just Two more Sleeps

Just two more sleeps before we go
Two more raisin toasts in the sun
In the morning whilst Zach staggers
Or giggles, shouting at Grandy
Their own language of fun and love.
All things must end, separation
Looms and casts its shadow backwards
On us all, tingeing final days
Hours, moments pouring out of hand.

Shark nets at Neilson Park, walking
To Tamarama, Wayamba
Weekend, goanna in the gums
Shutter clicked and saved, remembered
Pictures and feelings intertwined
Joy of the family gathered
In Adelaide, Yackandandah
Friends, Melbourne and Armidale too
Flat whites, gelati, Igloo Zoo
Masterchef dishes cooked with love
Together laughing and baking
Past midnight, for our special boy
Starfish Penny at Chowder Bay

Magical summer shared with you
Preserved in poems, photographs
Drawings, in the eye of my mind,
Will warm my heart, in winter’s cold.

Sunday 26th April 2009, for Dan and Hayley

Life in the Present Tense

Life in the present tense

Decaf skinny flat-white
Twice, in the noise and chat
Of families, friends met
In the Sunday café
Speedo’s, North Bondi Beach
And me, thinking, alone

Of 'Time to say Goodbye’
Sue, gone too soon before
The wonder of Freddie,
And others, now leaving
Fate having chosen them
At random, I suppose

As flies to wanton boys
All lottery and chance
Or god playing dice, eyes
Blindfold? Choose for yourself
Philosophy of Death
Life in the present tense

No rewind button or
Fast forward, how it ends,
Here and now all we have
To light our way, living
To avoid if only
That saddest word- regret

May 3rd 2009 Speedo's Cafe, S Bondi

Lily's Song

Lily’s Song

I saw this morning, Morning Glory
Indigo splashing on Bondi wall
Memory’s eye clicked and locked it in
Saved with same, convolvulus climbing
Rampant over Keralan hillside
Blue as the picture book butterflies

Lone traveller, my poem drops on
Boarding pass, Quantas to Coff’s Harbour
Through ten shades of blue where ocean ends
And sky begins, remembering Pied
Beauty, Hopkins’ Glory Be To God
Astonishing quite my schoolgirl self

I think of Lily, beloved child
Each morning’s sun and evening star
Growing in beauty, her spirit free
In a French landscape, to soar and fly
Grounded in love, a fragile blossom
Still, tightly I hold her in my heart

April 19th 2009, on the morning flight from Sydney to Coff's Harbour

No Boxing Kangaroos

No Boxing Kangaroos

Labram’s hill, Yackandandah
Early morning sketching
No boxing kangaroos
But birds glorious in technicolour
Crimson rosella, lorikeets
Honeyeaters, nature’s gaudiest on show

End of summer autumn tints
And fearful drought’s dire signs
Tall trees felled, grass burnt brown
Victorian landscape in Indigo Shire
Our English friends at home here now
Welcoming us, visiting your new lives

Gold rush history, cottage
In the country township
Speak of settler hardship
Flat whites on The Bakery’s sunlit porch
A forest walk to Woolshed Falls
Then stunned by sunset over sacred rocks

How much you have gained, making
This move, from crowded streets
A world away, England
To blue skies land, with space for all to breathe
For boys to run and spirits grow
Freely, wild and lovely, Australia

For Mandy and John, April 2009

Dreams from my Father

Dreams from my Father


Lunging through grey waters to Kangaroo Island
Southern Ocean’s jewel, last stop Antarctica
I think of time and place and separation’s pull
And journeys made in tears and hope


My father an ambitious Scot set forth one day
With never a backward glance nor grief for family
Dreaming, I suppose, of making his life anew
But stopped abruptly, meeting love


Another now turned sixty settled long ago
To raise a family where eucalyptus reigns
Beneath the Southern Cross at night, his world upturned
But yearns for England’s soft rainfall


Tread softly now for baby Isaac sleeps and dreams
His doting parents present joy and future hope
From the Solomon Islands, England, Adelaide
Forbears travelling, meet in him


6th April 2009, Ferry to Kangaroo Island

Rain on a Tin Roof

Rain on a tin roof


Rain on a tin roof, Tintagel fifty seven
You said, in a drizzly roadside cafe
First stop after the Twelve Apostles
And I stepped in through memory’s window

Or a taste will do it, Proustian Madeleine
Like Heinz salad cream on Little Gem
I hear Arlott’s rounded Hampshire vowels
But you’d have the score and last man in

Pineapple mayweed, Stratford, my cousin Ann said
Smell- we sat among patches of this
In Primary playground, threading chains
And I remember too, shared sweetness

Some moments- Cuban missiles, terrified to school
My father’s news, Kennedy is dead,
Mandela walking free, Obama
In village India- will stick fast

But by the Southern Ocean, sketching Monkey puzzle tree
Strident local accents in the air
I wonder at memory’s lottery
Choosing what is lost, what will remain

March 23rd 2009, Bell’s beach, Great Ocean Rd.

Weekend at Wayamba

Weekend at Wayamba

On the lawn’s margins a blue wren
And his dowdy mate, farthing birds,
Patter and bob, cock heads and fly
Friday at four, we’re home to Wayamba

Angophora said Rosie, not gum
Stringy Bark Iron Bark Grey Gum
Peeling to glorious orange
Countless giants under deepest sky blue

A place of story book wonder
At the end of the trail, tin roof
Half hidden, verandah spread wide
For shelter and shade, for peace and retreat

You toil in your garden with love
For this land, teach me of wattle,
Eustraphus called wombat berry
Fruiting bright yellow like the robin’s breast

We walk and we talk, stopping here
To pull up fleabane, a war
Without end on the forest floor
As distantly the clever lyre bird calls

Mice in the cupboard, goanna
Lumbering by, Zach’s on the roam
So we’re all keeping watch, old friends
Together under Australian skies

See what you started, dear friends
Worlds away that April Sunday
Children and grandchildren, our lives
Together, we give you thanks and our love


For Rosie and Donald, 30th March 30, 2009

For Jodi

For Jodi


See you here now, twelve years on
In your stripey sun hat waving
With stroller and Daisy and Mae Rose
Smiling as you walk out of our past
Another country where you
A girl, I a working mum
Passing, as I left our school you came
But instant friends across age's divide


Traces of you left behind
Words in my notebook, photo smile
So both of us not quite forgotten
As babies were born and oceans were crossed
A magical moment in
Melbourne's blue skies city square
Touching our lives together again
Lost and found, my special Facebook friend

Melbourne 20th March 2009

Summer Hypnosis

Summer Hypnosis

A little boy stands outside the circle
Feeling the drone, two three, drone again
Of Breton pipes in summer heat
And mesmerized, he shifts and sways
Caught up in the rhythm of the dance

So now I, mother of the boy
Witness that same hypnotic charm
Pulsing through circling salsa drums
Calling to child of my child
Seducing sleep in Bondi sun

March 15th Bondi beach for my son Dan

Picturing India

Picturing India

First spread the canvas with cow dung
Wet, to shine
Now with chalk make a Rangoli border
Pattern echoing pattern in terracotta and white
Next hang garlands of jasmine and roses
Deep pinks, acid yellows that nimble fingers swiftly tied
Have jacaranda and bougainvillea spill exuberant
Oranges, shocking pinks, a million paper butterflies
Splash here a field of bright green paddy
Women in saris, bent gracefully at the waist, toiling
Before the sun grows hot.

Cast shadows from fanning branches
Under the elephant legs of coconut trees
Paint the crowded road, a slow cart lurching
The bullock pair with matching horns
Decorated for Cow Pongal
A hen fussing her tiny cream powder puffs
Scattered in the dust
While on a straw hill the flashy cock struts
Here’s a whole family on a bicycle, baby fat brown legs
Poking from mother’s sari, and a yellow auto putters by
Brave in the monstrous crush of motor lorry, bus and bike.

And now the village weekly market
Tomatoes onions brinjal plantain garlic
Spread in the fly-specked sunlight
Small round lemons and limes in heaps
Green bananas still clustered on the stem
Picture postcard shots amidst the squalor
Rubbish gathered and scattered, people and dogs scavenging a life
Crow upon crow upon crow lordly squawking
Winding through the scene, pencil in five strange figures on bicycles
In stately procession past fat gaudy Ganesh and his puja gifts
Add the flash of white-toothed smiles, hands raised in ‘Vanicum!’

Frame upon frame snapped and stored in the mind’s eye
Precious memories held in the heart
Until we come again.

K V Kuppam February 2009 For 5 on a bus pass in India

I will put in my box

The Magic Box

I will put in my box
Raghu grown-up and greeting Pam in English
Balaji taller, more gaunt, with a black beard
Suresh mature and full of wit and sparkle
I will put in my box
The tiny beautiful mother serving us a feast
Banana leaves, crossed legs on the floor
And their delight at my ‘kunjum Tamil’
I will put in my box
Swarms of small children ‘What is your name please?
Photo please, one more photo'
Garlands of acid yellow and purple flowers
The men showing off their speed weaving and India versus England cricket
I will put in my box
The beautiful girls who are the story behind the One Candle
The mother with new wet Mehndi hands
And her fat baby boy, woken to a sea of strange faces
I will put in my box
‘ Happy Pongal’, decorated cows, chickens riding on a motorbike
Rangoli colours and temple racket through the night
Balaji’s dead friend, his sadness and his quiet help with Brian’s bike

And the walls will be made of our attempts at each other’s language
With in each corner a candle of love across the cultures
And all of it wrapped in their gratitude for a chance at education
And our delight at the chance treasured and cherished


K V Kuppam 15th January 2009