Tag Archives: Helen Hagemann

The Subject Tonight is Towel, and other poems by Helen Hagemann

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The Subject Tonight is Towel

The subject tonight is towel

And from tomorrow night

And days after

Dad has no better topic

For us to discuss

Until we all

Hang up our towel

After showering.

 

Walls

Some people love walls.

They keep in yelping dogs,

But never cats or birds.

No one sees them talking at night

Yet walls do talk – to each other.

They compare positions, compositions.

Are they stone, cement or brick?

When they need our attention

They crumble for repair.

In winter a storm will blow them over.

Make gaps for geckos and hens.

Can you see the creatures scurrying

Passing two abreast?

Robert Frost loved walls, and said

They make good neighbours

Especially if they talked,

Had one’s garden trimmed,

Kept apple trees to one side

Pine cones to the other.

 

Do you love walls?

 

Leaves

There are

So many leaves

 

Each hangs on a branch

In thousands of different ways

Your eyes will see differences

 

Infinite shapes: ovoid, needle

Heart-shaped, linear or pencil

You can draw them green in spring

Paint the tree from where they came

Crinkle a gum leaf for its scent

 

So many leaves

Unfolding and falling

Into your world

 

Helen Hagemann

Helen says: I have three grand-children under seven years of age (both parents work) and therefore I notice things like towels left on the floor! Also I like subjects that might possibly appeal to children.

 

 

 

 

Imagining the Life of an Earwig by Helen Hagemann

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Imagining the Life of an Earwig

 

Leave a door open long enough

and an earwig will enter. The kitchen

is the most popular to travel in.

Among insects a decision is made

(those of different species)

not to touch or pass by in the hallway.

An ant and earwig might come together

and part, safe in the knowledge

that when one leaves another arrives.

It’s the past meeting the future

simultaneously.

Whichever direction an earwig goes,

it will be one fast step

from the swish of a dog’s tail,

or the pounce of a cat’s paw.

Outdoors, earwigs forage in drains, leaf litter.

They love the chemistry of winter air,

the heavy crash of rain, a blue sky when it stops.

Sometimes you find an earwig sleeping between

the sheets of the morning newspaper,

although a quick flap or roll

over discarded scraps

can be fatal.

Helen Hagemann

Crusader Beetle by Helen Hagemann

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Crusader Beetle

 

She is not the Japanese beetle

who devastates rows of basil plants;

 

that brown and black fellow chomping

circles in your garden spaghetti herbs.

 

She is not elongated, black and lemon-tipped

like Soldier beetle who swarms in number

 

spring and summer; gardeners anxious they’re

plaguing Melbourne. Crusader beetle is not

 

bejeweled in topaz, emerald or sapphire

like Jewel beetle. Nor is she the roller

 

of poop like Dung beetle, ready to squeeze

her offspring inside (like famous Alexander

 

Beetle’s matchbox) reducing methane as she

dillies away on a cow pat in less than twenty-four

 

hours. No! Crusader beetle is neither of these,

but a “Joan of Arc” carrying her bannered symbol

 

on a bluish back. A cross in clear salute, as if

she is proud of her history, out there warring

 

against predators, her pink and grey feelers

tapping out miles travelled between home and

 

Acacia bloom, wing-pads blazoned with that

repellent X, proliferating Indonesia, the Indo-

Pacific, or at home, her hind femur and inner
teeth ready to slay Australia’s backyard weeds.

Helen Hagemann

Brown Honeyeaters by Helen Hagemann

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Brown Honeyeaters

 

A brilliant blue rising from a bronze morning

and Brown Honeyeaters are circling the garden.

 

Today, they are in the olive tree in my neighbour’s

yard, performing aerial songs (although it’s more a short

 

sharp, tweep!). Before spring, I counted two regular

visitors to our horticulture of Canna lilies, Yellow

 

Bird-of-Paradise, Grevillea, Frangipani, now there are

four! As if in concert, they dance, plunging to and fro.

 

It’s balletic, reminding you of Rudolf Nureyev and Dame

Margot Fontein in Romeo and Juliet. One of the

 

fledgelings is as graceful as Maria Kochetkova, a

Giselle fluttering her wings, thin as the veil of a tutu.

 

There’s fussing from parents, followed by a preen on

brick wall and hedge, a bird commotion of tutelage.

 

The best is their closeness, high in the branches, and now

that the young are fed and sleepy, the show has stopped.

Helen Hagemann

Silverfish by Helen Hagemann

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Silverfish

Not as lucky as a Las Vegas dollar
nor as silver,
but if you look inside panelled rooms
there may be several silverfish
touring endlessly in the house of a miser
or in one of those 19th century cottages
where the rain soaks North Somerset,
bookshelves covered in trench coats.

You know that silverfish chew into glue,
plaster, paint, photos, sugar, coffee,
hair, carpet, clothing, dandruff,
book bindings and paper (and that’s
a lot to get through in a week!)

Imagine one slippery silverfish
in a musty library of a French poet
travelling through paragraphs of Reverdy,
John Donne, Simone De Beauvoir or Sartre,
his hunger moving toward simile and speech,
words curling into little white ropes
and lifting from the page,
one letter at a time.

 Helen Hagemann 

Sorry Notes by Helen Hagemann

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Sorry Notes

In the morning when I walked outside

it was like stepping back into a previous

spring, one year ago, and counting on ten

fingers the number of mice our male cat

had dropped at the back door. So I wasn’t

surprised this year to see another mouse,

already in rigor mortis, forepaws together

as if in prayer; exhaustion showing on its

face, as if flung from a far universe

and the intensity of a cat’s playful tease.

So now, with notebook and pen, I’m writing

sorry notes to all the dead mice whose souls

must have lifted up that day from their small

graveyard of parsley, basil or mint. And a

final “sorry” to the latest offering, its tiny

grey coat pasted on terracotta; held there for

the author’s pen to record, either from pity or

sympathy, one word the mouse would never hear.

Helen Hagemann

Questions About Wasps by Helen Hagemann

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Questions about Wasps

Each morning, a wasp starts out as a lone traveller
heading into the garden, its hind legs dangling and
trailing in the wind. These moments are an eloquent

gesture of nature, the wasp on a journey into nectar,
jazzing up noisy wings, talkative as the bumble bee
already in the Fuchsia. There are many questions you

might want to ask, yet the only one you do know is
that wasps sting, especially late summer if you have
a fly swat or rolled newspaper in your hand.

Yet you’re curious about this eager garden traveller, like
a fly-in miner, flying out. Is he copying the tiger with
all those stripes on his back? Is he the bee’s rival, as he

hovers in mimicry? Is it to camouflage pincers in wax flowers
or to fool the bumble bee into thinking he is one of him?
And why does this busy wasp follow from petal to stamen

and stamen again, and not the other way around? What about
his paper-mache home, is that in the roof? Is he building
a colony of one hundred wasps, damaging the beams?

You guess that wasps are designed to make you think. So,
wondering about that loud buzzing noise as he backs out of
a bud, is he imitating the operatic bee who comes out singing?

Helen Hagemann

Praying Mantis by Helen Hagemann

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Praying Mantis

From inside the house
the praying mantis looks like

a caught twig, a small gesture
of wood rocking on wire.

Up close, it draws you in and
outdoors, its pencil-spine a cloudy

grey. Grey as the litany of squares
she hugs. The most interesting thing

is the way she carries her colours
to meld or disappear into fabric,

cottage wall, or branch. Tomorrow
she may be yellow, pink, or green

depending on the plot-size of garden
or unattended window, the parallel

lines of wire-mesh giving just the
slightest hint of stick, of leaf.

 Helen Hagemann