ODE TO A MORETON BAY FIG....POW PROMPT 12

POETRY ON WEDNESDAY WHAT'S ON YOUR MIND?

This 'laissez faire' prompt enabled me to write a lot of varied poems this week. I was in the mood and dashed them off rather quickly. It only happens now and again.


Ode To A Moreton Bay Fig

Some of you were around
for hundreds of years
I remember you everywhere

I remember you
in the school grounds
where small girls in
plaits and pinnies spent
summer afternoons creating
intricate dolls houses in
your vast flying butress roots

Small girls singing
small girls swinging
swinging from your branches
like Tarzan dropped shrieking
and giggling into giant
leaf litter mounds

I remember you casting your lovely
dark shadows on the sand
water lapping at your feet and we
snoozing
underneath your majestic limbs
stretched out
in the heat of the day

You have all gone now
I miss you
I miss you
each murdered
in one fell swoop
an agonising scream
then crash

I'm sorry
I'm so sorry
A few of us
died with you

Father
Do not forgive them
For they know
exactly what they do

What's On Your Mind

Lace


Wandering round Vinnies
today wintry and grey
on a mission to rescue
lace doilies carefully crocheted
by pink cheeked porcelain skinned
sweet old ladies wearing rimless specs
just like my lovely grandmother

Feeling mellow and happy
in the soft afternoon light
until I thought of that lace tablecloth
T'was a wedding present from the inlaws
That's the thing about the mind
There is no delete button

I remember trudging around endless
factories owned by their friends
to find the right discounted item
Stupid naive girl that I was thought
they had fallen upon hard times
not realising that this was their
chosen modus operandi
Soon learnt that there was some basis
after all for all those rude jokes about the rich

With the inevitable outbreak of WW3
A truce was reached with a divorce
In the division of the spoils I left
it behind along with almost everything else
I never liked it
They never liked me
They have been gone awhile now
I don't remember the table cloth
I still remember them

Irony

They beat you here by six days
You only stayed a few weeks
and then headed off
never to be seen again
Louis asked after you
just before he was executed

Well, so it's rumoured

Bad karma had followed you
to the Antipodes
The stench of blood and mayhem
back home rode on the wind's back
attaching itself as a flag
to your ship

Something made you leave
Britain's Devils Island
in a hurry to sail to your doom
Nobody knows why
Nobody is certain of what happened

A sixteen year old Corsican wanted
to join your crew but was rejected
Imagine how different the world would be
if you had accepted him
Then again imagine how different
things would be if you had got here
six days earlier

Oh and what about that aspiring painter
The pale watery blue eyed German
who was prevented from entering the Academy in Vienna
If he had been accepted
That probably would have made a difference too
But you wouldn't know about that
It was more than a century later
So what do you make of all of this
Monsieur le Comte de La Perouse

What's On Your Mind?

I always have a lot on my mind , so for this prompt I could be posting all week.
You can too if you like.

Born Again

I hail from the sea
rebirthed as a cowrie shell

No doubt I'll end up on
a mantlepiece or bedside table

A smooth speckled silent witness
privy to all the intimacies and
secrets no one ever sees

Sometimes I whisper sad wind songs
into an ear or am hurled at the Great
Dane jumping on to the bed

Reincarnation can be tricky

A Weekend With Santana

Something for the weekend. Enjoy this in the sweltering heat
all you lucky Northern Hemisphere folk dancing about in summer
abandonment in the streets.I think I have espied the normally
mint julep sipping, non perspiring, Southern Belle Barbara
frolicking about in this clip.

Looking For Mr Right

A spy has written a secret message in this ' wanted ad '

To make the discovery easy I will give you some clues.
The poem (not including the title) has 11 lines
The message consists of 11 words
There is one word per line
There is a sequence to the choice of words
The number 5 is a key to choosing the word
The message begins
'Whiskered......

Looking For Mr. Right

Am searching for a whiskered handsome husband
He should be a poet or an amateur historian
very well liked living in a little village
nestled in cold lovely Scotland
Writing terza rima sonnets has given him confidence
Robert Louis Stevenson's novel 'Kidnapped'
is important literature for me and my love to be
His keeness for justice, dangerous in its intensity
a potent force to come and be reckoned with
is fanned by flames quickly if provocation is unwarranted
He is there to help when the need arises

POW PROMPT 12

POETRY ON WEDNESDAY
POW PROMPT 12

POW has been up and running for three months already. So, for a treat and for being such nice poets you can write a prompt to
' What's On Your Mind?' Let us know what you are thinking.Are you thinking about?

a childhood experience
joining a choir
aphids in your roses
your wife's family
getting a tattoo
learning to ride a camel
changing your image
redecorating
learning the tango
finding God
becoming a hermit
falling in love again
broken spectacles
getting a gold fish
reinventing yourself
starting a cult
something you have read
ditching a friend
learning to meditate
becoming a vegan
a scene from a movie
sending your kids to boarding school
environmental issues
or anything at all

Hey, I think I have just written mine!

I look forward to your meaty, juicy, personal poems next Wednesday.

PS
I have claimed that rock at South Head. I go to think and contemplate there regularly. It is my 'thinking rock'.
Cheers
Rall