Tag Archives: nature

Plastic by Karen Hendriks

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Plastic

 

Useful, cheap, convenient,

Found everywhere in our seas.

Endless uses.

It floats, swims, travels,

Found in hungry bellies.

Entangles and traps sea life.

 

Our Sea

Once clean and pristine,

Full of plastic debris,

No longer free of you,

On the sea bottom,

On the sea top,

No escape from you.

 

Crying Sea

How much longer can the sea put up with you?

Or will the sea just become a murky plastic soup?

Please stop the plastic poisoning,

Before it’s too late.

Stop making useless waste,

That hurts and kills me.

Karen Hendriks

 

Guya by Lynelle Kendall

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Guya

 

Arc of horizon

Sea hugging land

The shape of myself

I leave in the sand

 

Hollow of woomera

Line of my spear

Poised over ocean

Sparkling clear

 

Shapeshifting shadows

Shimmer of scales

Strike fast as lightning

Timber shaft sails

 

Cuts through the water

Whoop with delight

We’ll eat barramundi

For dinner tonight.

‘Guya’

 

Lynelle Kendall

Lynelle says: Written in response to Poetry prompt #3 “Shapes”, the third and fourth lines of the poem refer to the U symbol that represents a person in traditional indigenous dot paintings. It is based on my experience at Daliwuy Bay in Arnhem Land, where I watched a boy fishing with his spear in the shallows. In his language – Yolŋu Matha – guya means fish.

Blueberry by Sally Odgers

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Blueberry

 

blueberry bluetongue

green grass green

sunshine sunshine

polish me

glow me

sinuous slithering

not-snake-just-me

blueberry bluetongue

secrecy

Sally Odgers

Sally says: Written because I almost never write free verse. I was trying to rhyme and scan throughout.

 

Hard Times by Melanie Hill

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Hard Times

 

I’m a rock.

Just a rock.

A sedentary rock.

 

I was warm until

blasting wind

left me with no cover.

 

I’m a rock.

 

I was dry until

eroding rivers

submerged my craggy face.

 

Just a rock.

 

I had friends until
they crumbled
and relocated to the beach.

 

A sedentary rock.

Melanie Hill 

Light and Shadow by Jenny Erlanger

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Light and shadow

 

The sun is low behind us

as we contemplate the view,

a vista to remind us

that we’re part of nature too.

 

We happily surrender

to the grandness of this spot

and know within its splendor

that we’re nothing but a dot.

 

Our shadows, in defiance,

take a more aggressive stand.

A family of giants

makes its mark upon the land.

Jenny Erlanger

 

A Shelter by Neridah McMullin

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A Shelter

 

I put off going to bed,

The cloud cover,

Keeps the heat in…

And the stillness

Is oppressive.

 

Robins, wrens, honey eaters,

Panted the day away,

In shaded canopy,

Their beaks open.

Too hot to complain.

 

I open up the house,

All the doors; windows.

Something might wander in…

But hopefully,

It will wander out.

 

Thrown wide,

It’s no longer a house.

It’s a shelter,

A secret place.

A bed in the forest.

 

Under the sheets,

I listen to the night’s music.

Muted waves break,

Crickets click, ruffled feathers soften.

And at last, the birds are asleep.

Neridah McMullin

Mother and Child by Warren Cox

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Once … upon a long ago

we sat inside the quiet

and watched the sun-kissed waters drift

beneath the morning light.

 

A place without a number;

a world with no address;

tucked away behind the trees

where Golden Whistlers nest.

 

Where thoughts so soft and gentle

filled my mind with peace.

And locked me in a moment

that I hoped would never cease.

 

But nothing lasts for always

and time will have its way.

The world and I have aged since then

and dimmed my yesterday.

 

Yet still one memory strong and clear

rests safe where it was filed.

A snapshot of the love that is

a mother and her child.

 

Warren Cox

Blue Mountains Gully by John Williams

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Blue Mountains Gully

 

Yellow crops of sandstone,

Jagged mountain peak,

Red display of waratahs,

A meandering bush creek.

White display of flannel flowers,

Bottle brush with orange cones,

Beautiful fronds of tree ferns,

Blue gums with crafted tones.

A frolicking roll of mountain mist,

An ancient windswept cave,

Green moss upon the velvet rocks,

Falling gum leaf gives a wave.

The tinkling sound of bellbirds

Run echoes round the stream,

A yellow-tailed cockatoo

Circles back to where it’s been.

The buzzing of a bush-bee

Comes from near a fallen log,

A croaking sound pervading

It’s a golden striped tree frog.

This bush display persistent,

Wallaby nibbles grass nearby,

A lyre bird shyly into view,

Kookaburras sit in branches high.

The melodic sounds continue,

Chirping birds with coloured plume,

Gorge of coolness calling,

Mountain gully, nature’s loom.

 

© John Williams