My poem is simply called, ‘Reversable Poem’.

Reversable Poem
© Garth Dutton, 2010

Long morning.
Car windows misted-up.
Crows call from stobie pole.
T.V. is on, but the program is off the mark.
Mailman brings no letters.
Waiting for change of fortune.
Listlessly listening to music.
Beer or wine?
Winter day.
Rain squalls.

Rain squalls.
Winter day.
Beer or wine?
Listlessly listening to music.
Waiting for a change of fortune.
Mailman brings no letters.
T.V. is on, but the program is off the mark.
Crows call from stobie pole.
Car windows are misted-up.

We were given a dozen pieces of paper of varying sizes and shapes, and had to write a line of poetry on each of them. Then we had to shuffle the pieces of paper into a heap, draw them out at random, and however they came out was the poem.

The result of my effort is simply called ‘Collage’

Collage
© Garth Dutton, 2010

Reflected light from a rock pool.
In Kansas it is easy to believe the world is flat.
‘Centre of a triangle’ written at the centre of a triangle.
Daybreak rises.
Trip on kerbing and nearly break wrist.
Cold wind whistles around drainpipe.
Friends come back from McDonnell Ranges, three days early,
rained out in July.
Icelandic volcano closes down Europe’s airways.
Hooray! Coopers Creek flood reaches Lake Eyre.
The River Torrens is trying to stay calm
in the wind. The waves are reduced to ripples.
If I lock my screen door at night,
I’d never get out in an earthquake.
White gum blossom/ lots of honeyeaters/ too cold for bees.

Hope you like it…

Window
© Garth Dutton, 2010

Window pane is cracked.
Paint peels from weatherboard.
Mining town
when mines have been closed.
Even the pub is run-down.

The white-flowering gum tree
over my back fence
is in full bloom
in early June.

On sunny winter days
it is full of noisy birds
busy eating nectar.
Lorikeets, wattle birds,
New Holland honeyeaters,
and more.

As I type this poem,
the sounds of birds
drift through an open window.
Natural background music.

A South African
of French Huguenot descent,
Afrikaner Resistance Movement leader
Eugene Terreblanche
is dead,
killed by black workers on his farm
during a bitter pay dispute.

He believed his Afrikaner ethnic group
was specially created by God
after the Creation.
Anyone who believes they are
one of God’s  Chosen People,
or a Master Race,
or Direct Descendants of the Sun God,
and so on,
is faced with one immediate problem…
‘How do they treat everyone else?’
The answer is always the same,
‘Quite appallingly.’

These birds
have adapted beautifully
to life in Adelaide’s suburbs.
Originally Burmese doves,
they came from the hot wet climate
of a tropical rain forest.

Here they have adapted
to a cool wet winter
and a long hot dry summer.
There would not have been
one item of food from
their original rain forest home
available here.

They had to find a new year-round diet
from scratch, and have done so.
In some Adelaide suburbs,
native topknot pigeons and suburbia pigeons
have separate territories.

In other suburbs,
they share backyards and parks.
And I am sure they now
have no ‘racial memory’
of their original rain forest home.

They are in Adelaide to stay.

    A few months after the dream, their ‘Church of the Feminine Earth Spirit” had its
first doctrinal split. The issue involved was whether the fossil fuels used in the Industrial
Age were meant to be used to stabilize the climate for the whole of Earth’s benefit, or
whether they were laid down specifically to enable humanity to survive a long Ice Age.
In a way, the argument was completely irrelevant, because there was not much left of the
fossil fuels. No-one had any idea how people were going to survive an Ice Age
without fossil fuels for heating, and there was no oil left to raise the CO2 levels to stop
the Ice Age. Many people were starting to put their trust in the ‘Church of the Natural
Balance’, as they alone believed that they could stop the Ice Age. But the concept of the
Feminine Earth Spirit appealed to many people as well. A considerable number joined
both churches.
     But it was an old argument, in new guise, about whether people are an integral
part of the environment, or a class of beings apart from it in consciousness, intellect,
destiny, and so on… In other words, were the fossil fuels created for the whole of Earth’s
benefit, or only for people’s benefit. The split was irreconcilable. About 45% of members
left with the dissenting councillors. Bitter arguments followed in court about the Church’s
now considerable income and assets.
    “Things are going off the rails,” said Smyth, as he and Pauline walked out of the
Adelaide Courthouse.
    “Just consider the distance we’ve come since that day in the seaside bar,” Pauline
reminded him. “After that session in court, I feel like a drive and a cup of tea or coffee
somewhere down beside the sea. Pick a beach suburb you haven’t been to in years and
we’ll go there.”
    “How about Semaphore?” he suggested.
    “Why not,” she replied.
    They reached their hydrogen fuel cell car and drove west towards the beach. They
neared the coast a short distance south of Semaphore. The road, called Military Road,
went between the lake plus housing estates of West Lakes and the built-on remnants of
sandhills.
    “The problem with making too many plans,” said Smyth. “Is that we haven’t
much idea what is going on in the rest of the world. Like what is really happening in
countries like Canada, Scandinavia, Russia and Scotland? They could be under metres of
ice and snow for all we know.”
    ‘The democratic government takes the line that what we don’t know can’t hurt us.
They haven’t lifted censorship on the NET, for example,” said Pauline. “Not much we
can do about that… Could you imagine a landscape under ice like that?”
He found he could envisage such a scene and went on to describe it to her. He had
always refused to say anything about his time in the State Security Police, even to
Pauline. She now saw how they had used his skills. He could describe in detail a real
scenario from a few fragments of information.
    “If you can describe it in that detail, then that it what is actually like. Right
now…” she said in wonder. “Mentally part of you was just there.”
    Smyth frowned. Objections to her point of view filled his mind. “I can’t see how
that’s possible,” he replied.
    “Neither can I, love, but it doesn’t matter,” she said warmly. “But it’s a skill you
shouldn’t be ashamed of.”
    Smyth spilled out deep fears. “The dread that a scenario would be wrong in some
slight, but significant detail, made my life in the Security Police a nightmare,” he said to
her for the first time. There was no need to say more.
    “That’s why that other nightmare still worries you, isn’t it? That’s why! In case
some important detail was wrong,” Pauline said softly. “I told you that everything
anyone does involves risk. One has to be a warrior. A warrior can cope with any
circumstances that arise, so doesn’t live in constant fear of the future. Collective
Consciousness warned you, so it’s on your side. A powerful ally, if ever there was one.”
She smiled to re-assure him, then continued. “In a way, all circumstances in the future are
unseen, because everything we do involves choices. And risks. I’m not sure premonitions
really exist. At best they’d be warnings, not factual events.”
They came to Fort Glanville and turned into the short road that would bring them
to the Esplanade.
“Fort Glanville,” said Pauline. “Now there was a scare. About 200 years ago, in
the 1850’s during the Crimean War, there was a rumour, and a wild panic that the
Russians were coming. So they built this fort, and a few others, and linked them by
Military Road to repel the invasion.”
    “I know the story,” Smyth said as they came to the Esplanade. He stopped the car.
They got out to look at the beach and sea.
    Suddenly Pauline turned pale. “Two hundred years ago,” she murmured.
“Someone had a dream or vision. What if it was a dream or vision ‘out of time’, if that’s
how it’s described? Two hundred years ‘out of time’. Not an event, just a warning.”
    Smyth’s vision of the northern pine forests sticking out of a metre of ice
drifted back into their minds. They looked at each other and then out to sea. And as they
watched, the first grey warships appeared on the horizon.

Cold Wind From The South (Part 2)
© Garth Dutton, 2007

    “Pro And Secret Cop Find New God In Seaside Bar!” screamed the headlines of
the ‘Weekly Tabloid.’ The text went on to describe, then take apart, everything that
Pauline and Smyth had said in the interview with the reporter.
    Smyth was angry. “They’ve made a complete laughing stock of us,” he said. “A
mix of primitive animism, Gaia Hypothesis and complete garbage, that’s what it says.”
    Pauline was unperturbed. “Don’t worry, love,” she said. “This whole process is
going to be self-generating.”
And so it seemed. The ‘Tabloid’ came out mid-week, and about 100
people came down from Adelaide on the next Saturday, to see where the ‘event’ had
happened. It was the same on the Sunday. The hotel did a roaring trade on both days, and
the plantation-wood-fired train from Adelaide had its best number of passengers for some
time.
    Mail started to flow in as well. Smyth was worried. “How can we possibly answer
these letters?” he said, and frowned. “Some are asking all sorts of complex theological
questions.”
    Pauline thought about that. “The original vision in the bar is all that really
counts,” she said. “We tell the truth… We are still sorting out the implications of the
experience.” She shrugged. “Really, we don’t have to sort out a whole doctrine ourselves.
Others are doing it for us.”
    She handed him a letter. He read it, and shook his head in disbelief. The writer
had said that everything people see and think goes into the living Feminine Earth Spirit’s
collective consciousness. She now sees far out into space with our space probes. The
writer also said that the few nuclear weapons kept to re-direct any asteroids that threaten
the planet, means that the Earth Spirit herself, via us, has now created defenses against a
disaster such as befell the dinosaurs, her previous guardians. “Your vision has been a
revelation to me. Thank you so much.” wrote the writer.
    “This is getting out of hand,” said Smyth, in despair. “The whole ‘vision’ or
‘revelation’, or whatever you want to call it, was something I just made up on the spot.”
“Men ‘see’, but have no confidence in their insights,” Pauline said, and hugged
him. “Women know an important insight when they come across one. The Feminine
Earth Spirit seems to have chosen a man to receive the insights, and chosen a woman to
interpret them. Neat I think, don’t you?”
    Smyth felt her warm body pressed against his, and knew the ice within him had
nearly melted. His personal Ice Age was almost over. He could hardly believe the
transformation she had wrought. Instead of being a despised relic left over from a hated
regime, he was now held in awe by many people. It was the same for her. Opportunities
to speak to groups of people came in at a steady rate, and as they kept to a modest fee,
kept coming. They bought a small but very tasteful house in Victor Harbor. Things
were on a roller coaster ride which was bringing both status and wealth. It seemed
nothing could go wrong.
    But one night Smyth had a dream. Somehow, he knew that Pauline had just been
speaking to an audience. Now it was his turn to speak. He went to the microphone and
began to address the people in the hall. He had no memory of the words he spoke, but his
attention became focused on a man about one third of the way back in the hall.
    Suddenly Smyth saw through the man’s eyes instead of his own. It was a strange
feeling watching himself speaking on the stage, almost like seeing a film. Then he saw
other things. Ice…white topped and pale blue below… grottos of it… vast landscapes of
it. Clear, pristine, beautiful; a whole planet of ice; a totally perfect world of ice that had
replaced the sins, pollution and disasters of mankind. As the man in the audience, he felt
himself rise to his feet, take out his pistol, take aim first at Pauline, fire, then shoot the
speaking figure at the microphone. Smyth felt the bullets strike home, and awoke
screaming and bathed in sweat. Pauline was mopping his brow and talking to him, but her
words didn’t register.
    Waking reality sank in. “A dream, only a nightmare…”he stammered. Pauline got
him to spell out every detail before it slipped from his mind, as dreams mostly do. Then
she picked up the bedroom phone and rang the police.
    “We’ve had a tip-off,” she said.”Possible assassination attempt on both of us at
one of the public talks we’ll be giving in the next few weeks. Sorry, I can’t reveal my
sources… Likely someone in the ‘Church of the Natural Balance’ is behind it. This
man has got a vision of a perfect world without people. A total Ice Age. They are
working to get the Earth back to correct operating temperature, this man is working for a
total victory for the Cold. So they’ve got a problem. Sorry that’s all I can tell you…
Thank you…” She put down the phone.
     Smyth got up, went to the kitchen fridge, and poured himself a stiff drink. He
needed it. “Did I have a nightmare, and only that, or was it a vision of the future?” he
asked Pauline, without really expecting an answer. He decided it was only a nightmare.
“Perhaps you shouldn’t have called the police.”
    Pauline poured herself a drink. “It was a nightmare and some of them can be very
real,” she said. “But certainly not a vision from the future.” She clinked her glass against
his, and said. “Collective consciousness at work. Someone was mentally rehearsing what
they intended to do. With luck, they’d now know that you’d know they were in the
audience. Warriors sometime fight battles with dreams.”

Hope you like it.

Spring Evening Walk
© Garth Dutton 2008

I go for a walk around the district
on a balmy spring evening.
The warm weather has caused weeds to grow tall.
Some lawns are neatly trimmed,
but others look overgrown.
The latter await a visit
from that artificial grazing animal,
the lawn mower.