On a clear day ...

I'm on the Observation Deck level of the Sydney (Westfield) Tower waiting for my mother and Spike to come in from their "Skywalk" outside, 260 metres above the city streets.  The views ARE stunning.

Summer Lightning

And in the far west, above Blue Mountains
obscured by the impenetrable haze
of a summer storm; late,
as dusk falls,
ribbons of lightning, luminescent
against the deeping dull of the bruised evening,
electrify a path acoss the torpid sky
in eerie silence.
                           Something wicked
this way comes, maybe.  Some portent
we may fear.  It fills the dark horizon
as we wait,  'til thunder,
endless moments later, breaks the tension;
making us, at once,
at ease
with familiar rhythyms
                         in sub-tropical storms.
This is not the end of days.
Not yet.

Festival first night

Tower of lightly fried potato

Tower of light

Skype

I'm joining the 20th Century it seems (the 21st is still a big ask...).  At last, after I don't know how long, I possess a computer (my FABBY wee ASUS T101G Transformer) with front and rear facing cameras and a functioning Skype account.  The world is my oyster.  I am its piece of grit.

Mind you, looking at the photo from earlier this evening, maybe the ASUS possesses me ...

The Bees by Carol Ann Duffy

Wonderful read.  Inspiring work.  There are some excellent and very good poems here (Bees, Politics, Poetry, The Female Husband, Virgil's Bees and Rings among them).  There are three poems I particularly like: Last Post, Mrs Schofield's GCSE and Atlas.

Last Post is a geat poem.  It is a genuinely worthy companion piece to Wilfred Owen's Dulce et decorem est pro patria mori, perhaps the greatest (certainly best known) poem of the First World War, from which Carol Ann Duffy quotes in her poem, commissioned by the BBC to mark the deaths of the last British soldiers who had fought in the 1914 - 1918 war.  Last Post will be read for generations to come.  It and Ms Schofield's GCSE will be reproduced in many antholgies in the years ahead. 

The bee metaphor may be a little overworked in places and unnecessary in others but that's a minor quibble.  The Bees is an accomplished collection, well worth reading; well worth buying.

This time he's bringing his mum ...

Photo by Spike

Betty and Spike emerge from the surf.  

We drove from Ashfield to Avalon (me, my mother and Spike) in the Transcendental Transit Van.  It may not be the fastest vehicle on the road but it seems to me these days to be as much a part of me as my beard.

It was the hottest day of the summer maybe so the stiff breeze off the sea was welcome as we sat in the shade, watching the Sydney summer kick-in before our eyes.  Spike took a couple of dips in the sea; fell over more than once in the tumbling surf.  Bracing, might be a word for it.  Two weeks short of her eighty-first birthday my mother walked through the white horses (as she calls them) of the Pacific Ocean.  If I have any determination to get on with life, I know where that inherited quality comes from.

Avalon Beach.  Photo by Spike

After ...

Photo by Spike