A Summer City Walk by Colleen Keating

colleen General, Poetry January 24, 2023January 26, 2023Botanical Gardens, Maria Little, Michael Keating, State Library, Sydney walk, The Calyx, The Green Wall, Tom Roberts, Trim, Wollomi Pine

A summer city walk

We might live up in the hills amongst the trees and birds
but a pleasant train trip has us in the heart of the city
in just on a hour

Our walk into Hyde Park past the Pool of Reflection
through the War Memorial past the Mary McKillop tribute
along Macquarie Street to our first coffee stop

like a Narnia cupboard our State library
is a portal to another world.
we begin with Cafe Trim for a morning coffee

Had to smile how famous is this cat Trim *
statues in his honour in England and here
books written and now a cafe in its name

a quiet walk through the displayed collection
one painting catches my attention
Maria Little c. 1895 worthy of a poem *

across into the Botanical gardens
where the same tree pulls us up every time
its presence so grand that one’s memory

cannot hold it as such and so each time
we meet it one stops and sighs deeply
as if in its presence for the first time

the Calyx was where we walked and sat
amidst a kaleidoscope of colour
plants and passion

close up of the Wollemi Pine
had me in adoration before nature
its early place in evolutions

looking close up at its binary nature
a tree that lived and survived before
even insects evolved

used wind only for pollination
needing the updraft from valley floors
to secure its continuation

Hildegard would’ve given her approved nod
to The Green Wall
and its 18.000 plants

with shades of green in great variety
and spelling out the word Diversity
this ambience gave us a restful vibe

Further on we walked in a wild English garden
mesmerised by the colours
and enterprise of bees and butterflies

a shady spot midst sandstone outcrops
and sparkling vista of a busy harbour
our picnic tasted delicious

TO THE MEMORY OF
TRIM
The best and most illustrious of his race
The most affectionate of friends,
faithful of servants,
and best of creatures
He made the tour of the globe, and a voyage to Australia,
which he circumnavigated, and was ever the
delight and pleasure of his fellow voyagers
Written by Matthew Flinders in memory of his cat
Memorial donated by the North Shore Historical Society
Maria Little c. 1895 by Tom Roberts.
This captures my attention..
Who is she really? What is she hiding?.Is she just shy?
What sadness she knows!
what has the invasion of our civilisation
done to her peeopls !
Archivists from the historical Yulgilbar Castle in the Clarence Valley Northern, NSW have recently identified the woman to be Maria Little , a local Bundjalung woman, who worked in the laundry at the Ogilvie family’s Yulgibar Homestead. Maria’s mother, Queen Jinnie Little, also worked at Yugilbar, along with many other Aboriginal people from the near by Baryulgil Comminity

Note below my gorgeous blue monarch butterfly

So that was my day in the city and here is another interpretation of the same day

Saturday 21st January 2023

from the diary of Michael Keating

Today we set out for a solid walking tour of the city. I took the Fizan Explorer Walking Pole. We drove to the station and just missed a train. It is so good to get off at Normanhurst on the return journey and have the car waiting for the last 300 metres of up hill. There were plenty of people on the train and in the city.
The Lunar New Year brought a wide range of people into the city. Many were in fancy dress (Rabbits Ears for Year of the Rabbit) and groups were chasing Pokémon type targets. Colleen was amazed by the range of women styles, fabrics and designs.

We alighted at Town Hall and used the Woolworths vintage escalators to make our way towards Hyde Park. We misread the changed pedestrian conditions towards Hyde Park and chalked up a few extra criss-crossing steps. We did the full stretch of Hyde Park. We walked down to and through the Anzac Memorial and around the Pool of Remembrance. Colleen took a photo of myself reflected in the pool. We were at either end and I was standing in front of the Anzac Memorial. The Anzac Memorial deals with WWl specifically with various acknowledgements of later encounters.

There are four sections of wall where mention is made of every town, village, suburb from where men signed up to join the various Armed Forces together with samples of soil.

It was intriguing to wander along and note places of interest – Coonamble, Moonan Flat, Wanaaring (Paroo), Quirindi, Bega – amongst hundreds of others. The Cooee trail is iconic in NSW legend. Since I was last there, they have added a significant water feature on the southern side (Liverpool St) of the Memorial.

From the main steps of the memorial one sees all the way to the Archibald Fountain at the northern end of Hyde Park. We walked down the Hyde Park Avenue and made a detour past St. Mary’s Cathedral. The sculpture of Mary McKillop drew our attention. I would have liked to have wandered inside the Cathedral but I had a hat and was unable to disentangle mask, sunglasses, hearing aids, hat cord. We walked down Macquarie St to the NSW Library where we had a cup of coffee. Thence took some time in the Portrait Gallery. It is interactive and I always like to wait for some inspiration from someone gazing down at me and then doing some basic interactive research. Today the subject was Maria Little – the indigenous daughter of ‘Queen Jinnie Little’. Colleen was quite intrigued.

From the art gallery we walked through the Botanical Gardens. We spent some time at the current Calyx flower exhibition. One of the Volunteer Guides was very pleased to answer our queries.

We had taken some food for lunch. As we walked down through The Gardens we kept a lookout for a shady seat. We are beyond just looking for shady grass. We were almost at the Opera House when we managed to find a seat. It was a great spot and we watched a wide variety of boats. There were no Cruise Ships in today.

We walked around to MCA to use the bathrooms. This enabled us to have another look at some of our current favourites. Colleen did have to take a rest at MCA and then we were on the Light Rail to Town Hall, through Woolworths and thence to Normanhurst via Hornsby.

Evening meal was a mixture of selective cheese, leftovers and a Lite’n’Easy meal.

We watched a French film called Amour. The film was from 2012 and had taken out some awards for that year. It was typically European film with subtlety and tension. The ending was both unexpected and predictable.

Thanks Michael, such a gorgeous day we both enjoyed. The venue 5 star. The company 5 star.

Welcome 2023

colleen General January 7, 2023January 11, 2023Looking forward, Mary Oliver, Myssteries, New Year, Thomas and Eleanor, Yes

INTO THE FUTURE. WELCOME 2023

THOMAS AND ELEANOR OVERLOOKING THE QUIET STILL BEACH OF ST IVES.

LOOKING FORWARD TOGETHER.

Mysteries, Yes

by Mary Oliver

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous

to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the

mouths of the lambs.

How rivers and stones are forever

in allegiance with gravity

while we ourselves dream of rising.

How two hands touch and the bonds will

never be broken.

How people come, from delight or the

scars of damage,

to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those

who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say

“Look!” and laugh in astonishment,

and bow their heads.

Last Day of 2022: Making Peace with our Earth

colleen General, Poetry December 31, 2022January 9, 2023December, Denise Levertov, Making Peace, Peace, St. Ives, Thomas and Eleanor

Saturday 31st December 2022 into 2023

With the now departing year
May your cares &sorrows ease
May the new year drawing near
Bring you happiness and peace. SC. Foster

IT IS TIME TO STOP DEFINING PEACE

AS THE ABSENCE OF WAR

AND START DEFINING IT

AS THE PRESENCE OF LOVE

Making Peace

by Denise Levertov

A voice from the dark called out,

‘The poets must give us

imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar

imagination of disaster. Peace, not only

the absence of war.’

But peace, like a poem,

is not there ahead of itself,

can’t be imagined before it is made,

can’t be known except

in the words of its making,

grammar of justice,

syntax of mutual aid.

A feeling towards it,

dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have

until we begin to utter its metaphors,

learning them as we speak.

A line of peace might appear

if we restructured the sentence our lives are making,

revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power,

questioned our needs, allowed

long pauses . . .

A cadence of peace might balance its weight

on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence,

an energy field more intense than war,

might pulse then,

stanza by stanza into the world,

each act of living

one of its words, each word

a vibration of light—facets

of the forming crystal.

PhotoS taken 29 th December 2022..

Thomas and Eleanor walking the cobbled lanes of St Ives, Cornwell.UK

December 26: Our month to be at peace with the world by Colleen Keating

colleen General December 26, 2022December 26, 2022December, Judyth Hill, Peace, Wage Peace

Wage Peace

If you want to see change in the world you have to be that change..

With this year coming to an end we look forward to another chance,
What can i do to be that change?
How can any of us BE that change?

A poem by Judyth Hill speaks for today

Wage Peace

By Judyth Hill

Wage peace with your breath.

Breathe in firemen and rubble,

breathe out whole buildings

and flocks of redwing blackbirds.

Breathe in terrorists and breathe out sleeping children

and freshly mown fields.

Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.

Breathe in the fallen

and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.

Wage peace with your listening:

hearing sirens, pray loud.

Remember your tools:

flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers.

Make soup.

Play music, learn the word for thank you in three languages.

Learn to knit, and make a hat.

Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,

imagine grief as the outbreath of beauty

or the gesture of fish.

Swim for the other side.

Wage peace.

Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious.

have a cup of tea and rejoice.

Act as if armistice has already arrived.

Celebrate today.

Our month of December has come to its peak which for many is Christmas day, a festive holiday, a coming together of family and friends, a celebration of the Summer Solstice with the balmy longest day of the year, or for some asad lonely day or just another day with lots of hype and traffic and food .

After a year afflicted by terrorism and war we need a critical mass of ‘yes’ for a new year bringing in peace. Let peace be the way of our world.

December Days summer gardens, friends, parties, art galleries by Colleen Keating

colleen General December 23, 2022December 23, 2022December, Nativity, Peace

Decembers Days

Making peace with our earth, our world of humanity and ourselves

A friend who is in Assisi for Christmas sent this photo. A reconstruction of the simple story of The Nativity. In the darkness of the shortest day of the year when we wait . . . .in the dark . . . the new light
rises and begins its return. ‘And the Light shall overcome. That is our Hope that the Light shall overcome. Nature shows us over and over that life conquers death . And so we believe. On the shortest day and the longest night may this blessing make its way into our hearts. However that being said we are here in Australia so we have to turn it all around and find another story of symbolism.

OUR SUMMER SOLSTICE

We have always had to imagine the deep dark cold of Christmas night here in the Southern Hemisphere.

Our Kind of Peace

One kind of peace is a state of life that is free from chaos and turbu- lence, from violence and institutionally le- gitimated death. That kind of peace happens often enough in histo- ry to show us that such a thing is possi- ble. But don’t be fooled: that kind of peace can be achieved as easily through force as well as through jus- tice. In that case, little is gained by it.

But there is another kind of peace. This kind of peace does not come either from the denial of evil or the ac- ceptance of oppression. This kind comes from the cen- ter of us and flows through us like a conduit to the world around us.

Summer Days

Friends

Parties

Art Gallery: New Modern extension

Inspirng Art for Michaels A story that he is fond of still chokes up tlking of it.

Family

Vale Robert Adamson May loving arms hold Juno through this time

colleen General, Poetry December 19, 2022Pip Griffin, Robert Adamston, The poet redux, Vale

December 18th 2022

Vale Robert Adamson.

One of Australia’s great poets and poet of our Hawkesbury River. An inspiration to so many of us. My friend asked me to share this poem with all who mourn his loss. She wrote it in 2013 when she was reading on a platform with Robert. She sent it to Robert and he replied with his thanks and affirmation. Now our love focuses on dear Juno for the empty space will take time to reconcile.

Enjoy Pip’s poem:

The poet redux

(for Robert Adamson)

Love is what he’s about

this gentle man

who draws birds

writes poems about them

and the woman

who told him once

to choose between

the drugs and her.

Whatever he was then

she could see

the love in him.

He gives it now to us

words dancing

from his fingers

from his lips

and from his generous poetic heart.

©Pip Griffin 22 September 2013

Clear Water Reckoning

By Robert Adamson

I write into the long black morning,

out here on the end of the point,

far from my wife in Budapest –

as the river cuts through a mountain

in Sydney a poet is launching

his new volume Under Berlin

and I feel like Catullus on Rome’s edge

but this passes and I turn to face

the oncoming dawn, the house

breathes tidal air as the night

fires outside with barking owls,

marsupials rustling, the prawn bird

beginning its taunting dawn whistle;

I burn the electricity

and measure hours by the lines –

I have strewn words around the living room,

taken them out from their

sentences, left them unused wherever

they fell; they are the bait –

I hunch over my desk and start to row,

let the tide flow in, watch

the window, with the door locked now

I wait – hear satin bowerbirds

scratching out the seeds from bottlebrush.

Dawn is a thin slit of illuminated

bowerbird blue along mountain lines,

in this year of cock and bull

celebration the TV goes on unwatched

upstairs, I hear it congratulating us

for making Australia what it is –

the heater breathes out a steady stream

of heated air – I go deeper

into my head, I see the Hawkesbury

flowing through Budapest, the Hungarians

do not seem to mind, they are bemused,

the river parts around their spires and domes,

I see other cities, whole cultures

drawn from territories within,

though with this freedom

comes a feeling of strange panic

for the real; so I get on

with it, writing out from this egg

holding my thought in a turbulent knot,

a bunched-up octopus. I steer

away from anything confessional,

thinking of Robert Lowell crafting

lines of intelligent blues,

his Jelly Roll of a self-caught mess

deep in spiritual distress.

Outside the river pulls me back,

shafts of light disintegrate into clues,

flecked symbols shine with order –

the bowerbirds have woven colour

around the house, through

bushes blue patterns of themselves

traced about the place; half

the moon can topple a mountain,

anything is possible here

I remind myself and begin to hum,

flattening out all the words that were

impossible to write today. I hum

out all the poems I should have

written, I hum away now also

the desire to write from memory –

there is enough sorrow in the present.

I look out over the incoming tide, dark racks

of oysters jut from its ink.

– Published in The Clean Dark 1989

DECEMBER 17: DECEMBER DAYS BY COLLEEN KEATING

colleen General December 19, 2022December 19, 2022December, Doona Day, Peace, Thomas

SATURDAY 17TH DECEMBER

DAY 17

I found the following quote for peace on google while wanting to read some of the lyrics of Bob Dylan
on my December theme Peace. IT WAS A DOONA DAY FOR ME.

Jimi Hendrix famously said,

“when the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.”
That was over fifty years ago, and the world hasn’t moved on much since then.
A glance at the news and you’ll see there’s still far too much suffering in the world.

We still have poverty, wars, famine, corruption, etc., despite massive advancements in technology.
We still have to fight for peace, though.
We can’t give up. “

My 11 year old Grandson who lives in England and who has just completed year 7 has read a Michael Murpugo book called Private Peaceful ,which involved him in the life of Tommo who confrounts the execution of his brother for being a coward and refusing to go over the hill into the fire.

Thomas has written and reads here a poem in response to his English set text.

https://www.facebook.com/messenger_media?attachment_id=997986667785134&message_id=mid.$cAAAAAHOxGauLNrxY82FBXKKKnqXq&thread_id=583285485

DECEMBER 15: OUR MONTH TO BE AT PEACE WITH THE WORLD by Colleen Keating

colleen General December 15, 2022December 26, 2022December2022, gift, Lao Tzu, Mary Oliver, Peace, white dove

Thursday 15th December

Day 15

The peace dove is a birthday gift from my sister. How special for this month of being in peace . . .another symbo, the dove, birds on wing that speak to us of being in peace.

Today it was a beach walk allowing the balmy ocean to wash and wave over my sandy bare feet .

Attending to the SWW work I need to do and to send 3 poems to Blue Heron Review.

If you are depressed you are living in the past,

if you are anxious you are living in the future,

if you are at peace, you are living in the present.

Lao Tzu

When things change inside you, things change around you.
Anon

And Mary Oliver tells us:

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it is over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

DECEMBER 14: OUR MONTH TO BE AT PEACE WITH THE WORLD by Colleen Keating

colleen General December 14, 2022December 15, 2022Dolphin House, Jan Cornell, Peace Lily, Pip Griffin, SWW

Wednesday 14th December

A year older today . Happy birthday to me. Above is Michaels gift –

A new White Peace Lily

Day 14

It is not enough to have peace. We are meant to extend it to others,
to increase the amount of it in the world,
to be signs of the quietude it brings to those who spread it.

And from Mary Oliver something I often share with others
just the perfect poem for a birthday
it is not too much
not too little
it is the goldilocks birthday poem . . . just right.

Birthday

I wish I was twenty and in love with life
and still full of beans.
Onward, old legs!
There are the long, pale dunes; on the other side
the roses are blooming and finding their labor
no adversity to the spirit.

Upward, old legs! There are the fo and there is the sea
shining like a song, like a body
I want to touch
though I’m not twenty
and won’t be again, but ah! in my seventies And still
in love with life, And still
full of beans.

Mary Oliver from Red Bird

This day, my birthday was set down as the last SWW meeting with a workshop with Jan Cornell, and a Book selling market . I took 3/4 books of the two verse novels and only sold 3 books all up as there was as many sellers as buyers. At least it was great to see all the books we as a group have written.