Haibun
My Green
Journey
I'm off to pay
exorbitant council rates, although I cannot think just what
their services
are. I drive an old jalopy on roads that cause every bone in
my body to shake! The
truck rattles as I maneuver over more deep corrugations.
Sky-juice falls directly from
heaven to the concrete rainwater-tank. My house-supply is fed
by a maze of black plastic
pipes, which initially appeared as dark venomous snakes,
slithering through kikuyu-
riddled paddocks. I giggle, remembering our earlier days of
fear—we’d
both been
petrified by these serpents, both been fooled. Violent storms
often cut off power.
Dripping candles illumined our nightlife. Dark nights became
romantic dinners for two
with smiles across the scrubbed pine table. Lana liked to
mould soft melted wax into
fanciful shapes. When she left them outside in the midday sun
they'd transform,
materialize into grotesque figurines. This irritated me, but
now I long for her to be back
here. Traveling on now, I revel in balmy tropical lands,
passing abundant banana
plantations patch-worked on green slopes. I know this road
well. On our first journey
together we’d seen a sign: “PLANT AN OZONE PLUG TODAY”. We
agreed. We did.
We planted many native trees. Rainbow Lorikeets, birds of
dazzling technicolor, skim
over my truck’s bonnet. The enormous sky is clear. Sun’s
energy through glass brings heat. Two hungry calves graze by the roadside next to a closed
farm-gate. They have no
fear, but I am cautious. I slow down. Another warning:
“TRESPASSERS WILL BE
COMPOSTED!”
forty foot
tall
towering, powering
her bunya pine
Tanka
too late
the investment workshop
at the weekend
tells me it’s too early
for retirement
my timber
bread box
gnawed along the edges
splinters on the shelf
what use the python in the roof?
my large black dog on the floor?
sometimes
I question
my relationship to rodents–
a nibbled apple
from my kitchen fruit bowl
strewn on the study floor
Haiku
summer
rowing
past submerged homesteads
in the corn fields
