SNAPSHOTS
3

so little time  
            so many infinities

A PoetryEtc Project:
Week Three:
Wednesday August 29

Power-breathing my way up the slope. Windless. Soundless. A dry season. Only the sound of breathing. A puff of rock-dust at each step. 10 steps, stop to breathe. Below, a sodden meadow, the stream two feet wide, inches deep, a peat trench through the greenery, and two small fish flee my shadow, arrow-fast downstream. Here scant cover, stunted red cedar and white-bark pine, clusters of trunks rising from the one root-system, tufts of needles like pompoms at the end of rubbery branches, flexible, to withstand the weight of snow. Not much soil here. Not much air. Two high lakes now that were invisible before. At the edge of tree-line. The slope suddenly level, and turning the corner of a ridge I'd thought would take my last reserve I'm on the pass itself--Vogelsang, tho no bird sings here. Perhaps 200 feet, a shallow pond between two promontories, the granite almost white--glaring against the path's brown muck, the near peaks chipped into odd, hieratic shapes. Ceremonial flints, I think. Facing north now, below me a wilderness of rock and boreal scrub, the world as it must have looked when the glacier faded--poised boulders dropped wherever, steep-sided lakes at the foot of scarred monoliths, white, and where mineral-rich water has evaporated stained black. A mile ahead and 500 feet below, camp a scattering of tents beside a stream and a mound of rocky field on the edge of still another lake, bare to the sky, horizontal in an otherwise vertical place. What luck, lungs raw, every bone and muscle aching, what luck to be here, the scent of woodfire from a distant blaze, the sky blue, brittle and cloudless. What luck to be here at this age in this time in the midst of this island of wilderness.

Mark Weiss

openings @
1/1000

faster than
the eye can
usually notice

shut
terrained
moment

movement
shadowed
leaves' lofty

turn
tuned to
wind's

empty immensity
immediacy
seen now

black
and
white


Douglas Barbour
Edmonton, Canada, 29.08.01: 0820

At first glance she'd appeared lifeless, the gentle slipstream of my breath having no more effect than to trampoline spider and web. Yet she remained very much alive. I noted her movements through the passing days, observing her awkwardly positioned slumber. See how she curls into sleep I said, pointing her out to my daughter.

But this morning, she's gone. Of her trifling web, there's no trace.

Had she offended? Been deemed an unwanted presence, tempting shredding of weaver and web?

Absence.


Ralph Wessman
Hobart, Australia, 10.51am

Music tangles tom-tom dark as the rain's free night percussive pours. The hiss on the glinting gravel between this house that house, soft bent elegy, stains the brickwork. And all the dampness had me running exposed, cold as fish belly and rushed with sky tears, running the voodoo. Clusters of chords bring a blindness hard to brush off till I passed through the bars and locks. And the flute leans into the centre, the always wobbly centre, with its new kind of reverb, but fire and skin cold and the melancholy funk lead to that same old place, near where the gutter cannot contain the rain, and it all comes down again.

Jill Jones
Marrickville, Sydney, 11.07pm

Moon sliced and weighted,
last night felt formal
with Uranus in Capricorn
not far from summer's triangle.

Sun diced and air-light,
the day thin as a wash
of particles in suspension
through which paper gleams.

Solidity, the trope
between breath and word,
half-life, quantum,
vulnerable to ghosting.

Always, that backdrop,
design and phantom,
death shining through
transposed across writing.


Michael Heller
Westcliffe, CO 3:50pm

Tranter's rain curtain
has stopped smoking. The river's
gone grey from withdrawal.


Anthony Lawrence
4.54 pm

You tipped your dish to receive deeper signals from a unseen source, or so it seemed. The Dark was ascending. Little did we know that this was your last moment of overt public power. Just at the height of your presence here on earth the weakening commenced. First a frieze of tan tattoos appeared atop your bald pate. Would it rather have been the vermilion of endless life fire that had manifested. Not this. Not this mousy brown curling inward that hasn't stopped in the hours now days that followed your final moment of greatness. Tank shaped scavengers commenced their feeding at your roots, nasty brutes, too. As you curl and brown out you seem to be turning into the loam itself. We would have preferred that you remain formidable and potent casting fierce shadow. We would have preferred that you change the world around you. Short of this an explosion from within and then an explosion up top with the whole fearsome shape launched over the planet come crashing down in one fantastic blasted finale, with many fleeing, running for their lives. This would have been better than what you leave us with: A falling downward inward into being eaten by mediocre terrible monsters. Not this, some other fate, one worthy of the esteemed account, "Hallucination."

Richard Dillon

Les Miserables and me on Broadway

Street's empty but for me and yellow cabs.
A shower squiggles headlights.
Neon heralds power and it shines in my eyes.
I breathe in the merit dazzled into believing
I belong. I smile, lips pressed. Rain hops off
my big black umbrella and I go stand beneath the
marquee of a play that I'm dying to see.


Joanne Denton

Fog threads through the maples burning off. The porch steps silvered with a skin of wet. Nailheads gleam & I remember the pleasure of pounding them in.

Joseph Duemer
South Colton NY US, 6.30am

I'm Still Weighing

the look I got
from the Dachau-thin
man with the huge bandaged
tumor perpending from his jaw

his purple scalp a garbage of hair
his mouth an irregular howl

as he moved like a poker
with legs, drawing the wheeled
hydraulic device
that allowed him to live behind

like a toddler's toy
full of suckings and raspings

into the nurse-filled shadows
at hall's end


Jesse Glass
Urayasu University Hospital, Japan, 1:30pm

Hiking

a cotton-tail leaps across the trail, pauses
beneath gray sage

my calves hard as pink quartz

*

blue-belly lizard

                 skitters ahead

heat

                 waves
*

                             boot

                                      prints

"...part of the world
not fallen from it"


Frank Parker
Big Sur, CA

A commuter's car
Collides with meaning, which moves
Slow in the fast lane.


Matthew Wallman
Driving along Victoria Road, Ermington, Sydney, 6.12pm

That green bush chord tangle is clattered by Reed International in this new format, which allows more information, but reduces the range of compositional possibilities: it makes room for so much one could do without, interesting faces imperceptible among noisome traffic

& a tack inside my shoe is working its way, singing a flat note into my sole, blurring me...

Were you here, I might have taken you somewhere else! or entered this park from the north and never come to the hill top - there, you see?

space seems torn apart, emptiness easy to miss it's so many

reminds me of going through a weak surface on scree into cold black mud up to the thighs - there is one from Arran in one of these folders - the shock of it, the apparent impossibility of so much slime in that granite rubble

till one knows more

this garden and the one-way system cannot be separated; such conditions produce such growth, this monstrousness, fleshing with really big panels they have to lift by crane they're so big, squaring up to take on our complete discommunity - it'll fill with bric-a-brac to be spread by attracted bipeds

in darkness, it'll gleam; each night, the birds'll chorus artificial dawn; real night, when each body slows, when brains descend depths along indiscernible dimensions to welcome peace, never comes

And here, you see, there's a large philadelphus, spreading out, hanging over the new walkway, but they haven't cut it back yet; it's gorgeous -

Lawrence Upton
Sutton, Surrey, in the park near the Home Improvement Superstore under
construction, 8:45am

The Coriolis effect in August:
The gale rages from the West
A continent is made scared.
Panics.
Goes mad.

Richard Bailey
Lawson NSW, Australia, 11.50pm

Open to the bare top and heather scented the path crumbled down to sandy stone washed away through woodland oak. Solid rounded each leaf its own. Roots deep a steady hold where the dark is most green.

Thinned to birches tremble tall fine strands white strips of parchment bark clean for writing. Green lane way out of the wood where ragged leaf and lace of thorn are sun to catch.

Liz Kirby?
Bosley Cloud, Cheshire, England, 6pm

prow of a ship nosing into dark bays, behind closed eyes, the grey alien eidolon, in an ad-break during Jean de Florette, night that the green drapes hide

and the instant leans like a drunk, clinging to a lamp-post, above the below-flow of the not-yet, its unexpected declamations

like a box orator haranguing the enmities of air


David Bircumshaw
Leicester, England, 1.37am

Huguenot Road Commute

Close enough to the bridge
to smell riverbank peat, feel damp
growth lush from last night's rain,
the line of cars blinks red-eyed
at the early morning traffic jam.

A helicopter shadow passes over
warning those who come by here to turn
and not look back, go to work another way.

Lights string as far behind as in front
inching closer, gears grinding, slow
gods not listening to angels.


Shann Palmer
Richmond, Virginia, 7.22am

BLISS A rainbow arc of hammock stretched between two trees obscures the lawn's flower carpet below. Gentle swaying. A mix of jasmine and freesia perfume. Filtered sun, grey clouds threatening, patches of blue. Distant waves crashing rhythm. Magpie warbles heralding the rainstorm looming. Temperature dropping. I may have to go inside soon. I can just see the yellow grevillea flowers over hammocks edge and a Rainbow Lorikeet upside down nectar feeding in clownish antics. The trees are hissing, the breeze stirs, the wind chime's clear tones are C maj tuned. There's much to-ing and fro-ing of birds. A kookaburra joins the magpie's song. Sky darkens. A butcher bird drops in and perches above me, garbed in soft greys, blacks and cremes; hopeful for meat scraps. I'm resting after walking the dog the beach's length. Sea eagles were fishing off Lion island again and the grey heron hanging out along millionaire's way. Rain starting to spot, I don't want to move. Floating on a ball of twine, gliding on my multicoloured wings. The currawongs have started now "its going to rain today". There's a lull. The breeze smells of rain on eucalyptus, recalls bush tea infused with smoke, misted valleys in early morning dew. I'm too lazy to go get a cuppa tea. Up high, the rain clouds travel on north, the patches of blue widen. Another lull. Its a quiet place to live with the birds. At night the Boobook mo-pokes the hours away. The bird chorus continues.

Josephine Severn
Pearl Beach, Australia

Four Cats

On the balcony
there are four cats.
Where have they come from?
I am no longer in my childhood
surrounded by Kirk the cat and Tom the dog.

Do these cats have names?
Why are they so still?
Have they been fed?
Do they have a leader?
Who is female? Who is male?
Cats are puzzles.

I will watch them.


Harriet Zinnes
New York City, 9 pm

AT THE DENTAL HYGENIST

Industrial strength
pile drivers and sand-blasting:
Past their sell-by date


Robin Hamilton
Forest Road Dental Practice, Loughborough, 3.30-4pm

     What to call a wall? We discussed it in my office. How it happened in
the past is that
     you would go in there and say well I don't like that wall, you can't
expect me to work with
     that wall, it's this or it's that, and they would say, well, sorry, it's
my wall, it's my property, essentially
     it's none of your business but in this case John invited you in and
asked your opinion of the
     , which you gave and he moved the wall, 1.9 m., just as you suggested
     .There was no confrontation, no politics, that is the relationship was
different, just as his business
     is different. So how do we name this wall, for the launch Friday week?
I think we must
     find out more about his business. So I rang him up and said are you
free, Billy and I want to
     ask you more about your business? Sure. So we went on down to his
office. John and Dominic
     we there, a table, four chairs, computer, telephone, white walls, grey
floor. John explained
     that if you tell people what the business is they categorize you and we
don't want to be limited , we
     are loathe to be at all specific. Nevertheless I listened hard for
language linking the work of the
     office to the work of the wall. He said we are neither this nor that,
we are both this and that.
     Then I said, ok I have it. We call it: Wall for Starkwhite. (Starkwhite
is the name of the business).
     Billy said what typeface do you use? Franklin. We'll make it 1.9 m
long, centred, and the height
     of the thickness of the wall. So he rang up Terry and ordered the
lettering. We walked back to my office
     where I had my snapshot to write. I glanced at the clock: 6.12pm, and
posted it.


Wystan Curnow
New Zealand, 6.13pm

late at night
becomes early in the morning
at some point.

what point? once was
i wouldn't have noticed
day or night

but now the night air
licks my bones
and i await dawn

like some quiet visitor,
nursing my cup of milo
on the balcony,

warming my good hand,
and blowing steam
over the geraniums.

i'll sleep later
and cancel out the demons
that loneliness breeds.


Andrew Burke
Western Australia

This is the way, past the Gemini Lucky Food Store, Sorry No Credit, and the windowless bulk of Leicester Gaol, a Disney facade of turrets, against which you find Nelson Mandela Park, while if you looked back, past the nightclub formerly Flaming Colossus, across the Welford Rd and Oxford St, and the noon-soon nausea haze of fume, and the squat double block of fifteen floors where I live, you'd see, in a bewilderment of signs, instructions, names, the Leicester Royal, the Infirmary that is. We would see a sign. Shop, prison, club, hospital, flats. The bound world rising from the maps. And the little park, like an exercise yard, and square, where a dog barks at the clouds.

David Bircumshaw
Leicester, England 11.25am

momentary acrobat

It was the bubble of her laughter, that did it.
The golden head thrown back with ease,
Towards soft feet that hung sublime,
Walking on her hands, with grace.

It was the easy poise of childness,
That brought me, laughing, to my feet,
From lotus pose,
To tumble.

When the world had righted ~ then,
I landed, and remembered ~ I am old;
My phone is ringing.

I keep her laughter, tumbling,
Through the background of my day.


Maria Fletcher
Campbell Town, Tasmania, 12:27pm

no people visible just arum lilies standing their rolled white petals like jugs beaded with droplets of early morning water outside this window which is not mine and beyond that a chainlink fence and a mess of winter herbage and beyond that the crooked tarmac of a road which is not mine and on the other side of that a blue wooden fence and a house half repaired in the pinks of prepainting and next to that a squat brick veneer house with an old red car parked in the carport and behind that a tall cypress such as is found on the Greek isles and behind that a sky of uncertain colour presaging neither rain nor sunshine nor snow nor hail nor sleet merely a colourless cold which may be mine since I am breathing it in and out and in and out and in

Alison Croggon
Williamstown, Melbourne, Australia 8.54am

gold red peaches
firm, waiting

last plums picked,
silver ladder lost in leaves

beneath bright sky
Canada geese fly and clamour

morning pours
glittering from the sun


Layne Russell
Redding, California, morning

On my way to pay the papers before commencing my Tuesday tour of the Trowbridge House, the Livingstone pub, and the Englishcombe Inn I meet Jack, the taxi-driver, International Scout Commissioner, one of the Jones's who had all the butcher's shops in Bath, and he talks history to me. He now lives beside the Burnt House Inn where the Neolithic Wansdyke and Roman Fosse Way cross. I didn't know that. And he tells me of King Ingil of Wessex who had his castle at Englishcombe Village and which is now a green mound. It is a pity Jack won't write a book. He knows so much. Yesterday I was reading Tom Shippey on Tolkien's England. I walk on.

Douglas Clark
Bath, England, 12.10pm

poetry workshop

the young men stay behind
soaping dishes
she is surprised by their penchant
for bubbling kitchen mirth

would it surprise the women
parting quickly
that these men in iambic
spur a competition
to be the worst at sport

and would it surprise
the grumpy men in gardens
that their ladies, immersed in Whitman
prefer a house away from home

would it surprise, at all, the young ladies
that jouissance-men, like petals
prefer the power in a language
Chaucer honed

it does not surprise her
to see a vision in their maleness
like a Paris kiss of Picasso's time
this is



Helen Hagemann
Edith Cowan House, ECU Joondalup, Western Australia, 1.20pm

someone is cooking fish
I hate the smell
it must be a barbecue
I can hear them
shouting in whispers
the dog stained grass
struggles to recover
I don't think I can stay here
the smell
will ruin my lunch
"here" is the patio
"here" is my back-garden
here trees block neighbours views
mitigate the sunlight
turn the suntrap of the brochure
to a dappled inconsistency

I watch as a bird eats
from the feeder
hanging from the shed gutter

in the next garden
the fish burns


Jim Bennett
Wallasey, 12 noon

The cattails by the beaver pond painted with afternoon light. Glint of silvered water through the green as I drive by. Early Autumn maples over there. Yesterday's storm cleaned everything up from Summer. Now we are ready.

Jospeh Deumer
Between Colton & South Colton NY, 4.00pm

My snapshot for
       the day was
overexposed --

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Robin Hamilton