Something to do with trees

We knew it was right when
we arrived, in the immediacy
of alighting from the car a feeling
of warm sentiment invaded,
sustaining the comforting years.

And when we’ve been away
in the other wilderness
it greets us with the same
veracity as it did
on that first day.

I don’t know exactly
what it is, I have tried
to find a theme, maybe
in the symphony of bird calls
ringing the redolent air,

in magical views of ancient rocks jutting
spectacularly from Glasshouse plain – hedged
in perfect bush-clad ranges echoing
the pervasive, subliminally trumpeted
flair of ethereal quiet.

Or perhaps it is something to do with trees and
their uncritical silence, the overwhelming sense
of security; something to do with trees whose
nearness is an affectionate, ever-mutual embrace,
reaffirmation we belong here.
© I.D. Carswell

Abandoned, but not alone

Abandoned, but not alone
in a carnival kaleidoscope
where the beat goes on – sure
and steady with rhythms strong
tho’ the dance is not the same.

Abandoned in a frame of fractal
shapes unfolding fern-like
fronds debasing a rigid plan
of our sometimes strained but
still amiable relationship.

Abandoned by the ways
this late growth has gained
credence, taking precedence
over the ambient years of
benign, untutored friendship.

Abandoned, but not alone
with my memories where you
remain a flower in bloom in
the renaissance of spring,
the scent of my dreams.
© I.D. Carswell

Cover your head

So the answer is,
cover your head;
instead of attracting
you’re said to rid yourself
of unwelcome attention.

Conditions apply naturally,
elevated in their entirety
by a spokesman for
the affected gender.

Swathe yourself three inch muslin
if you must, present an appearance
of endless bandages, it will halt badinage
about your advertising for sexual assault,
though you’ll appear is if in triage.

Devout men say a woman’s uncovered
head inspires outrageous and uncontainable
lust, it is just possible – certainly at times
a woman wants it that way. But they
don’t get a say in the matter.

So the answer is,
be rendered
one sense less
or cover your head.
© I.D. Carswell

When you aren’t here

It had taken all day to get to the front door, and
considerable effort you are assured. There
was no incentive to make a greater play at being
part of this day, and when I reached it I had
nowhere to go. I had ideas, I’m never lost for them,
but there at the doorway the choices didn’t pretend.
You were away, now is that a state or an expression
of who you are? Anyway, you weren’t here
so it didn’t matter where I went. So I didn’t.
Nothing matters when you aren’t here.
© I.D. Carswell

What it is (or might mean) to be…

Wholly crap,
you’re not going
to hold me to that!
I’d rather emigrate,
it’s a whole lot easier
– just upset the
Government and wait.
The Office for UnAustralian
Activities will come to
investigate rumours
you drink warm beer and
apparently like it, and find you’ve
resided (but were not born)
here for 18 years without
actually ever desiring,
even momentarily, to be
a rebadged citizen;
or worse, determine from
occasionally sober sources
you’d rather be dead than
classified a loud-mouthed
Australian. In any event they’ll
graciously offer you a choice of
immediate passage to Afghanistan,
North Korea or New Zealand.
One way of course, despite
ample proof you’re an
agreeable Australian poet with
published verse, are already influencing
contemporary thought about
what it is (or might mean)
to be Australian, albeit spoken
sotto voce. In my defence
I can aways say I intended to
be a model citizen but Johnny
Howard’s Gang of fascist bully-girls
put me off with their right-wing
shenanigans. Yeah, sadly,
THAT’S what they’ll
hold against me!
© I.D. Carswell

unAustralian
There's been some hoo-ha recently about the expression unAustralian.
Some suggest it's a recent political invention, and others that it's unAustralian to call something unAustralian. But the word unAustralian appears in both the Macquarie and Australian Oxford dictionaries meaning: "not in accordance with the characteristics…said to be typical of the Australian community". The sociologists say that today unAustralian means "incivility and foreign influence". Hence, the big banks are sometimes called unAustralian. Most people don't know that the word unAustralian first appeared a hundred years ago. In the first half of the twentieth century it referred to communists, fifth-columnists, or radicals. But it's also a word used in fun. A citation from 1965 refers to a gadget as "very unAustralian". And there's a folk band who released a CD called 'UnAustralian Songs'. So, while Americans may take being un-American very seriously, Aussies seem to think that unAustralian means not being able to barbecue a steak properly.

Faked transports of joy

What a blast, what a sodden farce
of dripping, snotty drivel; an egoistic critic
‘quills’ a leery parse of gooey words
which reek of grandiose and rutted praises,
squeaks of self abuse and candied phrases
snatched from paedophiles deceased,
of rotting places rank, decayed and leeched
for wages, pandered at the foot of verse
we knew was bad before this malefactor
singled out and made the scribing gesture,
wafting hands theatrically,
intending to engender deep
and mystic messages fulfilled in sham
ejaculations of duplex delight.

And we’re supposed
to somersault through gaudy
hoops and beam with gratitude in faked
transports of joy and radiate with glee nacre
rays of iridescent, borrowed energy?

Don’t think so Jack(ass)!
Your ego needs
a healthy smack – and NO,
I won’t read
your fucking poetry!
Pretty please?
© I.D. Carswell

Botherhood of duped fraternities

The lonely road was short of three miles,
if it hadn’t been I would still be riding in
the bus to school, muzzled and dressed in
a straight-jacket, still distressed by the
closed groups who sat in cliques and ruled
from their non-transferrable seats, angered
by the moronic driver who closed his insect
mind to their shameful behaviour,
permitting proprietary gangs
to rule the school bus aisles.

I rebelled. I would not take their shit
and threatened one and all to combat.
It never came to that, the driver put up
my weights and I was expelled. I could not
give him thanks, the rat, but was glad he
was so easily lead. It made getting one’s
own-back so much easier, and so sweet is
planned revenge. Thus I rode alone with no
repeal to school, a solo ride as none of my siblings
was required to make the trip on two wheels.

A loner bent on righting personal wrongs became
the legend I recited as I rode the lonely road,
an unrequited maverick, prepared to clench a fist
and fight for creature rights, a madman in the face
of group harangue, a saviour to the weak, oppressed
and sick at heart unless they joined a chequered gang.
And thus it stayed. I never joined the botherhood of
duped fraternities, of joint stupidity, I found
my lasting friends amongst the stong, free spirits
resisting populist insulting opinions.
© I.D. Carswell

Every poem for itself!

It is a daily dilemma, do I play the poet
flippant, or do I read to my heart’s content?
The old line ‘pay the piper’ springs to mind,
‘though a tune is non-existent and there’s no
evidence of a clear and current debt.

I can’t regret the time invested in this mad
pursuit, this target oriented abstruse dash
for a cashless cow. Before, the advent of writing
for the love of it had a seamy side which added
gainful stress and sometimes sexual benefit.

To avoid the mess of taxing confrontations
with an alter ego going West while I am
plodding South or East, I’ve chosen to redress
my journey North of here – a simple choice
that represents the best of here and now.

Tomorrow, where? I don’t take the mind to care,
I know the next verse has already taken root in
the seedbed where plantings are profuse,
where there is an anarchy that rules, instils a
madness calling, ‘every poem for itself!’
© I.D. Carswell

Good for another 50 years

Born 29 October 1940 and still running
strong on original components, a few
trifling rattles and squeaks, one or two
loose fittings but fundamentally sound
with a well engineered pre-war engine
and a solid chassis.

She’s racked up a swag of impressive
kilometres, not necessarily confined to
gravel tracks, or partially sealed back-country
roads liberally marked with cow-pats,
has tasted the autobahn and the freeway
and the salty sea air.

She’s sped through the atmosphere
at sub-sonic jet-speed, seen the sun rise
in the west and set in the east, bested gravity
and soared above a fractured land,
landed amid chaos and dissonance and
survived to tell the grandkids.

Okay fellers, that’s enough praise,
fill ‘er up with petrol, give ‘er an oil change,
check the radiator, pump up the tyres
and squirt a bit of grease on the axles.
I reckon she’s good
for another 50 years.
© I.D. Carswell

For 'little' sister Patsy who turns 66 on 29 Oct 2006

Keep on writing (while you wait)

Having decided
he was not insane
or anything
ordinary like that,
didn’t have
a drug habit,
beat his wife,
partner, children
or cat,
drove a 10 year old
Subaru 4WD and wrote
poetry without
ostentation
to preserve
The Peace at
61 years of age,
St Peter decided to leave
him standing at the gate.

He didn’t complain, just
looked a trifle bemused.

Any chance I might
get a chair to sit on,
he asked. Yep, said
St Peter, handing him
a pencil and a pad.
And you might as well
keep on writing
while you wait.
© I.D. Carswell

But Only Memories

We laughed at love,
we laughed at life
we stoked the fires
to burning bright
casting shadows of 
intense delight to dance among.

At our racing feet
were gentle petals torn 
of roses plucked at dawn
to cast aloft and 
flutter down with scented 
flakes of snow.

Concealed by night we 
were set alight by 
dizzy heart’s desire,
engaged in acts of love
soared entwined above
the dying fires.

Then come the dawn, we 
woke and fled alone, freed 
ourselves repentance and 
propinquity, with burning 
memories, but only memories
to feed our future needs.
© I.D. Carswell

My enemy my friend

My enemy my friend
whom I know without compromise,
when I listened to the
deconstructions avowed of you
as your brand of pernicious
lies I was ashamed.
I know where you situate
in matters that joined us
in vigorous hand to hand
(and at times bloody) debate,
I know where you opposed my
belated philosophies you would stand
as firmly of the same belief as I
that they needed to be uttered freely.
But you never said those things
you are unjustly accused of by the
makers of plastic peace,
you only claimed they could be
said in a free and democratic state.
And in a few hysterical moments
your worthy sentiments were crushed
by the heel of the much vaunted principles
you said would take your noble life in
denying the freedom to oppose them.
© I.D. Carswell

Free from intrusion

You awaken this time with a welcoming smile, an experience
sublime, not a dream – the boner from Hell
has presented itself like a prospect of fate, and reasoned
debate be damned, you’ll argue its merits later.

These things used to be so ordinarily a part of each wake-up
and every soaring lewd thought that you’d ever had
(and never considered of much ado until they dwindled away),
but somehow they just can’t be brought like that – nowadays.

While the thrill in wanting arms is still as real and endearing
as it was ever in your youth, what remains is a raw parody
of cheerless arousal, an urge that either fails to materialise
or has a sad sequel sans denial in a swathe of prosthetic cocktails.

However the time for reflection is passed, this erection is stealing
a march, a loaded gun pressed to the cheeks of good
reason, demanding admission at any price, commanding
a lunatic pride with its rampant, non-negotiable commission.

If you recalled past failures with the same bitter irony installed
where spontaneous enjoyment used to be you would call
your erection a subversive uprising, a potentially indecent
crime in the making, an affectation of masculinity impaired.

It shouldn’t surprise, your partner who’s faking a deep, dreamless
sleep is wise to the vagaries of your being a man in decline, and
while this is stroking your ego and heedlessly seedy sense of needy
maleness she’ll close her mind to it and demurely keep her peace.

But you are not free to pursue the sensual pleasures implied
by a mad-headed rigidness of thought and fixated flesh anyway,
this naïve ingénue with no sense of timing but the opportunistic
and execrably blue doesn’t rule you today, or any other day.

Do you take the irony out of ‘a grand geste’ and make it less sour
while you cogitate its aptness of design to intrude and intertwine
with the pleasures of night, mindlessly blind to a growing awareness
that shows early hours bliss of repose knows no limits in anger?

It will suffer the danger its presence proposes, inherent with chills of displeasure
disposing indignant dissent; perhaps it was meant as a glimpse of salvation,
an awareness that life is but self preservation, and a wife whose desires are
not less than stress free will sleep in seclusion, free from intrusion,

– provided you reach the same conclusion.
© I.D. Carswell

Dreams of a lifetime

Ronald Hi Khong Wong is gone,
sadly he deceased
the commencement of this week.
It wasn’t unexpected.
He never contradicted
the prediction of his death
although, perhaps, he hoped for time
to sort some odds and ends,
and we for time to make allowances
for our friend’s impending end.
Alas it weren’t to be.
We farewell him Friday,
commit his ashes to the air
and sea, our memories
to shared reminiscences,
to remember him
in word and deed.
We will miss the tall, wry,
oh so clever man
whose worldly view was larger than
a turning universe.
He could move us from
dour introspection with a scurrilous laugh,
a well placed jibe, his comic reflections.
We will miss the witty man who held us in awe
of his capacity to make light of his burden,
and though we might have wished
to write a better ending
it was a choice he faced with noble strength,
deciding to leave the way he lived,
never quite unpacked,
never quite undecided about anything that mattered,
but decidedly never at a loss for informed choices.
Goodbye Ron, we join our voices
to sing you into the deepest sleep
of a thousand years
and the dreams of a lifetime.
© I.D. Carswell

We reflect this day on the essence of intimacy

We reflect this day on the essence of intimacy,
from its origins in the spring-tide of youth
to an afterward secured in distant mist
in awe for the reason and to what end it endures.
We weigh the consequence,
keen with up-welling sentiment,
sense new love spring before the old
has run its course (but its course is never run);
each day adds its weight to the sum
we bear this day, to solidify with days gone by
in an endless summer’s inheritance.
Today we take time to renew our vows
and return to the mood of youthful love
with the same tremulous excitement
as beset us when we danced on its eve ‘til dawn.
© I.D. Carswell

Shirley of Serendipity

Where were you Shirley of the Sanguine Lake?
Where did you disappear? The echoes of your empty house
Were almost stilled yet held to soar the scheming rough
And quaver in a hollow fear. We raked the mirrored water's edge
And poled the willow shrouded brakes,
We plumbed the deep and darked ledge
And traced dimensions of our own despair,
Then waked in light to fete your coming home
- A home revered.
Who are you, Shirley of the Mall, who will you be
When you walk the shifting shingle banks
That line the random riverside?
Who will you be with your red, red hair?
Where will you be Shirley of Serendipity?
Are you there?
Already there?
© I.D. Carswell

For Shirley, who survives…

Forever Alight

Were meetings destined then this was one
to take a leading place, the oracle decreed it fate
in a matrix of moving matter, and the signs all clattered with
chance fêted as a sweet benefactor. When we were separate
entities in clear air with a fair breeze and sailing on pleasure,
scheming elements drove us together in a coincidental
confluence of paths, a meeting in all innocence;
but unlike ships that pass in the night, sharing glimpses
of distant but unkown consequence – and sail on free
in an unaltered conscience to reach detached destinations,
our passage through life was changed irrevocably,
our courses aligned by forces beyond our power to deflect.
Do you remember it now? Do you recall how it was?
In the mornings and in the clear light of day the freshness remains
in the glorious evening stars still burning bright,
the heavens forever alight.
© I.D. Carswell

This House Which Is Lived In

For Paula and her amazing Houses




This house which is lived in resounds
with the chorus of voices bound in the press
of its generous, unconcealed blessings;
affection is neither distressed nor restrained,
nor caught in the intricate mesh of wicker
and wire-ordered veins of its living construction,
contained within gentle, carbon-breathing walls.
The halls are hung with wooded reminders that ask
your forbearance – the task is benign
and in the heartbeat pulsing rooms
you find an arcade of worthy mementos
defined. The rooms are clothed in guises unique
and disconnected each from each,
yet oddly unified, resting easily before eyes
sorely seduced, wearing tenant characters
deduced in muted shades and crafted shadows
folded into thriving colour and softening drapes
hung or flung in wide, comforting curves revealing
the objects ordinarily placed in ordered disorder;
this space is so soothing and yet it deceives
in the ease that it steals your heart.
Where do you start in derisory word
and hackneyed phrases to describe this house
which astounds and amazes?
© I.D. Carswell

Thinking of an Afterlife

When was the beginning,
in the fertilising, in the flower,
or was it deeper,
in the earth beneath?
No end of wonderment
shall cease such a quest,
or know how it is unknowable.
We gaze on our cosmos in the cusp of a bloom,
to glimpse the mysterious, grasp at reality,
surrender a dearth of finality to find
our earthly world has nothing behind,
is all that there is
with nothing defined
but Being and believing
in finality of flower
and durability of Youth.
And that is the truth.

Time is upon us and we descry
the mortality bequeathed by our parent dead,
instead a wry but temporal frailty debases
in fragile strands, uniting tumultuous past
to petulant future, and we stand
before the tempest of noon
knowing how with surety as those who have seen it
our fate is soon and we shall wilt into the afterlife
our successors allow.
And when they smile in passing
and think of us with affection,
why then, yes then,
there shall be life everlasting.
© I.D. Carswell

Mountains of Delight

The problem was the manner of choice
(or whether there was a choice for that matter)
as you had taken those options to yourself,
choosing as you had to do, and as it was right for you,
there is no shame in that – and no reproving,
but my alternatives were emptied by your doing.

I define the weight of that odd convention
and what I attribute as logical is not natural
in terms of your reality, or contaminated by notes of practicality,
I am anxiously divorced from those restraints, halfway to lunacy’s
sanctuary where my unqualified knowledge provides
an illusory defence against what fate prescribes.

Oh, I hoped for a better life with fairytale ending,
a sympathetic resolution which implies
a fairer fate. It is far too late to make it thus I know, but I
won’t abandon my greatest ally, who was born
out of the same romanticism and grew worldly wise by my side,
steadfast and true, at least in the light of my colour-blind eyes.

So I cannot choose other than this singular place
where I already am, a place of which you know as I do
that there is no manner of choice in the matter.
And I accepted that irrevocably when I chose you.
It was never a question of winning or losing,
it was purely a matter of simply choosing.

Can we face this flight in concert and not judge
the road to come by looking backwards
where we’d find no pathway we could climb?
The mountains of despair which rise
out of the distant past are no surprise; our plight
should make them mountains of delight.
© I.D. Carswell
Anita, on her birthday,
June 13th 2005

I love you in the morning

I love you in the morning and at the setting of the sun
And in the hours of darkness before the day's begun
And in my waking solitude to greet the break of dawn
I grant you sleep that extra hour, although you sleep alone.
I love you in the evening and into the night,
I love you and I need you even when we fight.
If loving you were solid gold
I'd be a millionaire, but love is gold enough for me
and money my despair. I wish your life be full of joy,
Of triumphs and acclaim, and when the tumult quietens down
I’ll be here just the same - a kettle on the boil, a fire in the hearth
And warmth throughout our humble home
and loving in my heart.
© I.D. Carswell

Notes:

For once I am NOT commencing a new poem (or revising an old one), I am simply recording some thoughts in ordinary text to deal with later.

I had recently thought to begin a poem which focussed primarily on structure rather than esoteric poetic elements; it’s something I’ve been keen to do for a while. I learned to identify the main elements and variations in poetic rhythms while at school and I obviously haven’t found a use for the skill since, perhaps correctly so; I honestly never felt the need. Occasionally, variations from basic iambic pentameter rhythms have occurred in my writing, not necessarily by conscious design, but they were embedded in the language chosen at the time. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. What I was thinking of for this exercise was deliberately seeking those rhythmic differences and carrying the poem to conclusion.

And I will. But not tonight.

Tonight I wanted to reflect on how economy of words in poetry either works brilliantly or dismally fails. Too may words is just as bad as too few. If an image is complex and cannot be evoked by a simple phrase it is probably the wrong image; only occasionally is it the fault of the phrase. Usually it’s better to employ a string of simple images in progression to the complex rather than to try and encompass it in one hit - where the result is usually 'techno-gibberish'.

I have occasionally read poetry which is devastatingly simple, almost childlike in fact. But in the instances I am thinking of there were huge gaps between images, almost as if one was required to fill in the missing spaces according to one's own experience. The images were clichés anyway, which have a basic universality but expression of zero. In effect they were almost meaningless. The end result was no sparkling interaction and no poetic progression. Perhaps rhythm and meter were spot on and rhyme exceptional but the verse carried nothing. Even set to music it would be banal.

I don't intend continuing in this critical vein although I will try and provide an example of what I mean by simple and complex imagery. Let us take a complex idea, say: 'my headache is caused by nervous exhaustion and my heartache by emotional stress due to a relationship break-up'.

First, let’s try something simple :

‘With burning eyes like cats in fires,
a head of confetti and axle grease,
a moment’s disgrace to wear my face
in agony of my love’s decease.
My heart and my head would have me dead
and in death I couldn’t rest in peace.’

And the complex:

‘She left me in a cardiac arrest,
the verge of cerebral aneurysm,
I’ll live forever in distress
though I will survive the cataclysm.’

I can imagine, 'burning eyes like cats in fires' evoking a more imaginative response than, 'she left me in a cardiac arrest, the verge of cerebral aneurysm'. It is a case of horses for courses, of course, and where I poke fun at the complex others may appreciate it for its 'clinical' correctness. But believe me, I wouldn't use it except to poke fun. Like I'm doing now...

Hoping With Care

We are honored and humble and earnest to share
in events which would happen
although we weren’t there, a trifling thing
as it were we are sure but amazing
the changes it has wrought in us where
we’re inspired by dreams which ennui despairs.
We are awed by these joys but not possessed,
the paternally driven suffer no less
but not by paternity or urges that pry as voyeurs
who would without care occupy the privacy
and sanctuary of inviolate spaces, we stand off aside
and just watch their faces, we drink in the transports
of joy that we see, the living expressions
convey adequately. A lexicon in Angela’s
occasional frown, a wrinkling of brows,
the nod up and down, a lilt of the mouth
in giving an inkling, the words pronounced
saying somewhat less than she’s thinking,
and yet we forget that we are not even there,
we’re watchers just watching, and hoping with care.
© I.D. Carswell

For Aaron & Angela,

The Ease and Charm of You

There’s an infinity of wisdom in your smile that would deny
the winsome wit that lies at back of it; and then the droll and
cheeky svénska troll of you which peeps out from the
flimsy drape in which you sheet your public soul, an urchin
bold, a squirming sprite who claims a manic tithe
to steal with ease our ears and eyes and hearts.
It is not easy to dismiss your smile or snub a stronger
draught of it, or pass the impish guile infused with honeyed
tones of liquor dews that drip from curve of Nordic lip.
It’s just as hard to think of you as sad as stone
or cold as ice embalmed in time that never passed;
never passed and never thawed,
and never danced and never soared.
The furnace there that is your smile exhibits warmth
that mitigates the frozen fates and overwhelms
their frozen hearth, a warmth debased in languorous grace,
a subtle charm uncommon-placed with cheerful heart.
When you enter any room a light appears to shine from you,
the kind of light that only glows in happy times, a light
which shows no darkened tones, a light which throws
no sharp-edged shadows. And so at last we know the true
length and breadth and depth of you, and breathe with ease
the same enchanted air, we also feel the nascent breeze
that trifles in your vasty hair; at last we know the ease
and charm of you, and feel as free to tell you too.
© I.D. Carswell
To Our Beautiful Svénska Troll

Lake Otamangakau

I
The roaring of Te Whaiau intake weir
intrudes as sleep eludes again
to soar across the lake on white-tipped,
swan-wide wings.
A defiant wild cat's call, a tuneless howl
that crashes through these nylon walls
which stem the thrust of night, comes
taunting in and curdles dreams,
itching in the seams of somnolence.

II
Awake, aware in tented night,
a flax bush shuffled glissé tread
of frond on frond and seed-pod prattle
marching on the fractious wind
surrounds the tent, and lake, and
night.

III
Otamangakau,
swamphen sanctuary in raupo days
when mangatoetoe stalks were lances
massed to hold the mountain's fire
and flax grew greedily in this hollow.
Otamangakau, the anglers bowl
where fledgling streams enticed here mingle:
moaning through the pumice tunnels
roiling in the concrete tumbrel
to spend their youth in sluggish flow,
alpine children named like music;
naive, enchanting Whakapapa comes
resounding from its ski-slope, snow-fed quarters,
Mangatepopo, soda waters, adding basso tones
in concert from the cratered face of Tongariro,
and sprightly Wanganui frolics over lava tangles
heedless of its sluggish, adult reaches far below.

IV
A statue in obscene taste, the dredge which gouged
the channel and disgorged the levee mutely curses
all who pass; a monument abandoned, a Trojan horse
reviled in the graceful sweep of Te Whaiau canal:
but the promise of these waters draws me past this
chancre, its gaunt squat shell invites no second glance
when the silver phantoms deep in the greenstone lake
dance in my eyes.
© I.D. Carswell

On The Death of a Father

I was schooled well before he died, able at least
to feel what others felt when their fathers
were deceased. Able but not willing
and not without despair to glimpse the man
who’d hide the truth of just how much he cared.
My argent truth was fulsome gloom,
moribund and drear, my face a patent emptiness
occluding every tear; I’d gone to view him in his bier
and hoped he wasn’t there.

Driven to be reassured with no idea
of what I’d see, uncertain in my gnawing fear,
lead to where they said he rested comfortably,
- a wasted corpse too small to fill the space
the giant of my admiring youth had easily
displaced; it wore my father’s face disgraced
in modest death - a crushing disappointment,
a jest, I knew at once it was another
in his place. The man I loved for patience
and simplicity was clearly somewhere else instead,
yet dead, yet dead, oh most implacably.

Our sombre deed that day was one and last
for our departed Dad, we wore his coffin
on our rounded shoulders to its grave,
a coruscating scar before our heavy paths,
its blinding light a-thunder in our dismal thoughts,
our sight assailed with shattered shards that
charred the metaphors we brought to hear,
the metaphors we wrought with care,
the loving icons of our youth we fraught
to share and bury with familiar treasures
vested there. I fear I did not cry that night,
I did not dare.

This dismal place I hide my grief is crowded shame,
my father would have taught me tame my trembling lips
without contempt, face far constraints tight-lipped,
remain serene; I dream how well I played his silent game.

The years that separate me from the choke-voiced son
who spoke his Father’s eulogy with clumsy tongue
cleared the final clod of filial uncertainty. I know
my sons as one who loves, and know and feel
their love for me. In memories of a father whom
we laid to rest in strident peace and nascent piety
I see the vibrant image of the golden ones;
I so regret I never said how much I loved you
Dad, and so lament that you, Norman Frank Luke,
never spoke candidly of how much you loved too.

© I.D. Carswell

Jessie of Gibraltar

Our lives were founded on this rock, this Jessie of Gibraltar
Whose unfailing love endured beyond her ample nursing,
And we grew out of a rich and favoured childhood aware
Her powers were real (we tested them enough to know their soundness) into
Individual and relentlessly expanding worlds assured because she made it so.
And so into our grown lives in spite of distance and diversity
Composed by milieu unreconciled with age she climbed the crooked mile
To share with us (for better or worse) our triumphs and tragedies in life.
Memories of her wry perceptions and idiomatic circumlocution
Charmed the senses rather than presumed, she had
An uncanny gift to pin evasive teens and wrest the truth without
Conceding adolescent confidence and her continuous
And humble capacity for love and forgiveness allayed our doubt.
We heard it said she was the same into her final hours,
The impish humour that sprang forth brusque and clear
And a fierce resolve for liberty despite well-meant restraints,
A charitable reach for those she thought less fortunate
And practised feints she meant to let her will allow.
And thus she will be in our separate and unknowable futures
For which she fitted us before we knew. And now we know
So evident and strong an abiding lesson in humility sung
In the voices of children gathered to celebrate her life,
A song of radiant pride (though its sadness undeniable)
For a mother and wife who loved and taught her children to love.
And is gone.
In bidding her goodbye we raise her up again and bear her on
In the lives bequeathed our children,
To rest in everlasting peace.
© I.D. Carswell
February 2002

In memory of our mother, Jessie Maria Carswell (nee Gillgren)

To Henrietta Lyn

We're going to miss you little girl, you leave an aching space
way out of all proportion to your size. Tomorrow we must face the day
without your lavish greeting - without your urgent bark to wake us up
and say, "Let me out of here, the sun is up, I want to play."
We're going to miss you little girl, your cheerful wagging tail,
your blithe and saintly spirit quenching petulance. Each day
you trampled indolence with unbound joy and claimed
our hearts anew, we bloomed with you and learned to live
outside our petty selves for endless moments at a time.
We're going to miss you little girl, you filled our hearts with light
and gave us hope and cheerfulness when sombre shadows fell,
you declined to be subdued in shadows you disdained to see,
and shades of darkness in your supple spirit were dispelled,
now in the ceded aftermath we feel a weary, welcoming delight.
We're going to miss you little girl, our tears are turbulent
and gusts of grief regale our reprimanded souls, we seek
an answer in the cogent light of day without your warm divinity
as guide, and where your soul resides we find a harmony
as gentle as the calming breeze you blew into our tepid, troubled lives.
© I.D. Carswell

Touched my family

Even from afar came shouts of recognition
joyful voices rang across the disdained years and
faces of our childhood unforgot fit instantly familiar names;
voices still the same despite the extra grey, the extra lines,
like sacred family metaphors not blurred with passing time.

Uncles greeted cousins, nieces hailed their aunts in private spaces
kept for kith and kin, as if by chance this place, and the children’s
children ran and played while old familiars sought out old familiars,
said gooday. Some, adrift in paternity-disdained reserve then
feigned acquaintance, made clamorous greetings

never really meeting friendly eyes; we observed
no contradiction - in the art of being Gillgren
ambiguity's a smile disguised. And as more arrived
to swell the throng shyness shifted and was crushed
by this such overwhelming warmth of welcome.

That was handshakes day,
a day of greetings, of hugs and patent kisses,
of faded family jokes and famous legends, a day
we traded lissom lies and downright deconstructions,
disavowals and denials, embellishments and exhortations,

trials and travails, and everywhere without exception,
vibrant, friendly laughter filled the air. We packed the missing years,
relentlessly connecting memories, seeking explanations,
listening with desperate passion. We met again,
to celebrate our names, to celebrate our Patriarch,

Johannes Efraim Gillgren.
The moment which defined it came belatedly
amid a blush of ancestral patience (infused, no doubt,
by alcohol and calmed by pious charity).
We sat together, splendidly naïve on the threshold of similitude,

watching images of Johannes and forebears on screen.
The images would never cause abjuring sentiment
(we have the pictures in our albums - treasure every one),
but was no less a shock to find our hows and whys, where
with delinquent validation bared, we’d all endured yet come

by signal cause - and now we knew who needed who.
Mine weren’t the only tear-filled eyes, I cried
for Harriet and Johannes, and my parents who had died;
I cried without a hint of shame to love them dear,
I'd loved them secretly for fear of its discovery; yes, I tell you this,

for how so wrong it seems. And in the closeness of that room
reached out and touched my family.
© I.D. Carswell
Peachester, April 2005

After the Gillgren Family reunion in Rotorua, 2005