Letterbox-note ©

Along the message
the snail slides
deciphering
the letterbox-note.
Please come to lunch tomorrow,
Love
Jane.
Why wait? wonders the snail
and begins to dine on letterbox-note
till nibbling is complete
and diner disappears
leaving just the smallest, shiniest trace

of silver service.

A dancing cat ©

A dancing cat
pirouettes
in the breeze and
soft shimmy-sways with
velvety ease.
Then leaves the earth
with push-off of paws
and for a while
it skywards soars.
And all around
is fur and whirl till
back it lands
with tail in curl.

Then vanishes – gone!
like a spark or shiver
and all that's left
is the shadowy quiver
of a dancing,
    dancing,
        dancing cat.

Colours remembered ©

With a flick
    a flip
    a twist
    a flutter
autumn leaves pattern
sky and gutter
with colours remembered and
colours combined
from sunsets
of long ago
summers.

Whiskery mist ©

Island boat moored in bay
breathing in-and-out grey morning tide
oily water licks its sides
while whiskery mist slips and slopes
down gangplank.

Island boat putters
sputters, nosing through
the dim shroud
of sea-meets-sky
    a great soft cat with hushed paws
blurring, furring
furring, blurring till

a shriek rips the mist

fog horn

warns

danger!

Island boat heaves about, crouches,
moors again
breathing in-and-out grey morning tide until
slowly
the great soft cat stretches and

slinks away.

Spider light ©

Spider,
you hang upside down in dim corner
daddy-long-legging
like a fancy chandelier.

Are you waiting, spider,
for someone to switch on
the light?

These last three poems have all been accepted by The School Magazine

Nameless ©

Up here, there is a mountain.
Our eyes have seen it
for a long, long time.
We know its story
know it like our brother.

Way back,
when no fence or road
crossed our Dreaming,
we walked the land
guided by places
like our mountain.
We knew its story -
knew it like our brother.

When others came,
in jackets and boots,
to measure and write
and hand out names,
they called it
Mount Nameless.

But our mountain
had a name.
Had it from way back.
If they had asked us

we would have told them.

footnote: Mt Nameless is in the north of Western Australia. Its Aboriginal name is Jarndrunmunhna.

Published in The School Magazine (Touchdown) February 2011, No 1.

Bird Impressions ©

Two cockatoos soar and
pin back blue sky
with yellow-beak screeches and
snow-white wings.

Left in their wake,
two tiny clouds,
crested-white and angel-winged,
drift

like bird impressions.

I’d stepped out of a suburban shop, thinking about what I’d just bought. When I heard screeches in the sky I looked up. What I saw was a pair of cockatoos - two pure white creatures flapping jubilantly against a bright, blue sky. That was startling and satisfying enough. But then I glanced to one side. Immediately behind the birds, were two small, fleecy clouds. They were bird shaped, with wings outstretched - almost replicas of the cockatoos. I couldn’t believe. It was a magic moment. My purchase seemed dull and inconsequential after that!

Janeen has won the Tom Black Memorial Poetry Section of the 2008 Eyre Writers' Awards with her poem "Only Then":

Only then ©

it was as if he’d been there forever
in the yellow chill of that dawn
in that park
and in those clothes
outsized and pinned with medals

only the first sound of the bugle
as it fled towards the fading moon
caused him to stir
ease his back to straightening till
chest was proud
eyes fixed ahead
gnarled fingers
fist-curled by his side as he

remembered them.

A poem of mine received Highly Commended prize in the recent Ipswich International Poetry Competition:

Flood ©

If a flood can ignore important signs like
no standing and one hour parking
and enter a person’s home without knocking
and, without a broom, sweep out life’s photographs
so that images are changed forever,
then it can easily ignore
the cry of a child,
whose hand
loses grip

with another.

I was thrilled to learn recently that one of my children’s poems, The really big sneeze!, was a runner up in a British poetry competition.
The Belmont Poetry Competition had 400 entries and the winners were chosen by children!

The really, big sneeze! ©

A sneeze is simply
a remarkable snizzle
that starts with a fizz
and becomes soon a frizzle.
It tetches the toes
with a tingling shiver
then lightningly, tighteningly
springs to a quiver
that itches and snitches
the skin round your nose
and your eyes are all spilling
like some leaky hose
and your face has gone suckery
pulled-in and puckery
for the snizzle
is now spinning stars in your head
and they're flashing and splashing
a dizzy, bright red
and you draw back your lips
like you've sucked sour plums
and out in the air
an explosion just comes
that shatters and splatters
the air like a rocket - and where is that hanky
that’s deep in your pocket!
And you squint and you blink
and you sink to your knees
and exhausted, you mutter,
'Now, that was a sneeze!'

100 Australian Poems for Children

(2002) Random House

There was a Big Fish - Limericks

(1992) ERA

Christmas Crackers

(1990) Omnibus

Stay Loose, Mother Goose!

(1990) Omnibus

Fractured Fairytales and Ruptured Rhymes

(1990) Omnibus

Off the Planet!

(1989) Omnibus

Four and Twenty Lamingtons

(1988) Omnibus

Vile Verse

(1988) Omnibus

Petrifying Poems

(1986) Omnibus

Putrid Poems

(1985) Omnibus