Day Dreamers Slobs and Bush Mechanics

Albert Einstein

they thought
he was a loser
finally
a kind friend got him a dead end job
in an office

what if
he had nor spent hours
day dreaming about inventions
staring out of the patent office window



Alexander Fleming

what if
he was a neat freak
in 1928 he came back from holiday
to dirty petri dishes covered in mould
penicillin saved millions of lives


Thales of Miletus... 

what if in 600 bc 
thales had not been hanging out at the egyptian pyramids  around midday
sitting in the sun gazing at the shadow of a stick lying on the ground
he worked out how to measure the height of the cheops pyramid
you little beauty he exclaimed in ancient greek
bush mechanics was born





Midweek Motif - Poets United

Haiku Horizons

crown of thorns starfish
the great barrier reef
its killing field

Sea Movies - For The weekend Hello, From Skip

like a strange ocean bird
he carefully glides over the waves
with the slow grace of a javanese sultan's dancer
an old man still in love with the sea

PRAYING FOR RAIN

the sea is wild today
not one surfer to be seen
i sip coffee
breathe in the salt sea spray
so grateful to be here

my world  has blue skies in  winter
my world is drought stricken on the plains
everything dying around me
everyone glued to the weather reports
dreading the inferno to come

back in the city
my world
is a bowl of bright yellow sugar bananas
my first fresh fruit in weeks
living a life of contrasts
the rugged outback and the beachside suburb

ripe juicy mandarins
turning water on from a garden hose
can reduce me to tears
tis a luxury which so many bush battlers
have not experienced in many a year

we pray for rain

Midweek Motif - Poets United

Haiku Horizons

it happened so fast
i looked in the mirror
a stranger looked back at me

Aretha Franklin (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman - Kennedy Center...

The Queen Of Soul has departed. RIP.
Aretha Franklin 1942 - 2018

Heeding Haiku With Chevrefeuille - MLMM

a lady bird's treat
to bathe in dew drops and wash
her spotty wings

Blue Tarp - The Homeless Flag

Filthy Rich and Homeless: can empathy alone really change how we view disadvantage?

https://www.sbs.com.au/programs/filthy-rich-and-homeless

blue tarp
the flag of the homeless
in any country

the international flag of
shame
shame
shame
and in particular
the shame
of the countries
obscenely rich
prosperous
lacking in compassion
without a moral compass

there is no excuse
for the suffering
for the cruelty of
homelessness







And I hope I'm around to see it.

Thank God For Daffodils

Frances Fussell

Shadorma

things go wrong
and all together
it is life
i suppose
thank God for the daffodils
on a silver tray

Haiku Horizons

was lost and now found
my grandmother's rosary
a link to the past

Drought 2018

The big dry: 'See us, hear us, help us'

Farmers across New South Wales and Queensland are calling it the worst drought in living memory. Many are facing ruin and say it is time for their city cousins to acknowledge the disaster.

my country
i love a sunburnt country
a land of sweeping plains
of ragged mountain ranges
of drought and flooding rains

we all learnt this at school dorothea
we need flooding rain

about the poet dorothea mackellar 
she wrote bush poetry
of the  north west slopes and plains
her family had farms near here



dorothea
did you know

of dying cattle and sheep
of farmers committing suicide
of starving wallabies and roos
so desperate they lick the washing on the line
for a few drops of moisture




of a government who does nothing until it's too late
of a country which spends 4 billion dollars in foreign aid
but does not give free feed and water to its own farmers
in crisis

of city folk
of  smashed avocado on toast and lattes
filling their in ground swimming pools
who will realise when the supermarket shelves are empty
that
food does not drop like manna from heaven
it is grown on farms




Bev Hicks

"It's just relentless, you don't sleep because you can't stop thinking about it," she says.

I'd really like people in the city to remember us, see us, hear us, know that we're still here.

It's important to look after your own."

Lifeline: 13 11 14

Midweek Motif - Poets United

War On Waste

food is precious
we throw it away by tons
wicked wicked waste

 Oz Harvest is, a charity which collects food from businesses which would otherwise be discarded. "Australians throw away food worth $7.8 billion a year," it says


Haiku Horizons