Seven types of ordinary happiness

From Leunig - 2013 Calendar

Suspended animation

Creativity stifled and a life compartmentalised...
Wife, friend, mother, sister, employee, and lover.

The face we turn to the world
reflects what we want them to see.
The hidden depths carouse deep
in our veins' pulse, or otherwise if negated,
sink unused to sluggish murky depths
as one drifts through commonalities and banalities,
without spark and without light,
half asleep and living a waking dream.

There is beauty, when viewed unshielded, is blinding.
I knew that, have I forgotten? Am I only half awake?

© Jennifer Phillips (All rights reserved)

Sun over skin's hill © Jennifer Phillips

One making

You came in the night,

pulsing.

Like a panther in the sun

Haunches raised,

poised above me.

Energy potential.

The touch …

filled by you,

enclosing you,

shouting your name to the heavens,

in glorious ecstasy.

© Jennifer Phillips (All rights reserved)

© Jennifer Phillips

Thou art the sky and thou art the nest as well

Thou art the sky and thou art the nest as well. 
Oh, thou beautiful, there in the nest it is thy love that encloses the soul with colours and sounds and odours. 

There comes the morning with the golden basket in her right hand bearing the wreath of beauty,
silently to crown the earth. 

And there comes the evening over the lonely meadows deserted by herds, 
through trackless paths, carrying cool draughts of peace in her golden pitcher from the western ocean of rest.

But there, where spreads the infinite sky for the soul to take her flight in, 
reigns the stainless white radiance. 

There is no day nor night, nor form nor colour, and never never a word.

by Rabindranath Tagore

At Mount Duval near Armidale N.S.W. Australia © Jennifer Phillips

Two small quotes about relationships

"You come into a relationship as two blocks of wood and you have these corners. Those corners make friction and bring sparks. You make a fire with those or you allow your corners to be knocked off."

Toni Childs quoting two gay friends in a long-term relationship.

"We all need comfort. But for a couple, of course, it has its dangers ... we all want to live with desire, with passion, with evolution. When you are in a habit of things, can you survive if you don't lie to yourselves?"

Juliette Binoche

Frosted glass

I see your breath as it frosts my window - 
your words snake like water droplets
down the back of my neck.

I look around, but I cannot see you
out there in the dark, skulking in my yard.

Thoughts like copper coins occupy my mind,
spin in the lamp's light, burnished they cascade
and disappear forever, like water droplets in the sun.

Dream tendrils in the night sway, the world's shared breaths.
I breathe out, another breathes in, mingled on the winds.

You have gone now and I see clearly the stars
winking instead, and frosting my window.
I stand strangely connected, through a glass darkly.

© Jennifer Phillips (All rights reserved)

Flower's centre © Jennifer Phillips

Saudades

Tinpan Orange performing “Saudades” at the Quiet Music Festival 2010

There's a word, for longing,

For someone, or something,

That can't be found, in our language.

It's a type of anguish, our words don't know.

'Cause love goes,

Like a gypsy shawl.

Like an arrow,

Love is fast, and life is slow.

Like a jet plane,

Like a single day.

It comes, 

And goes away.

I loved him, I love him still,

Perhaps I never did, perhaps I always will.

But I walked away, and he turned his back,

Now all I'm counting is all I lack.

'Cause love goes,

Like a gypsy shawl.

Like an arrow,

Love is fast, and life is slow.

Like a jet plane,

Like a single day.

It comes, 

And goes away.

There's a word, I've been searching for,

That in my language goes unsaid.

It's him, that I've been longing for,

Now a memory in my head.

Because love goes,

Like a gypsy shawl.

Like an arrow,

Love is fast, and life is slow.

Like a jet plane,

Like a single day.

It comes, 

And goes away.

by Tinpan Orange

Website

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Rocks at Sorrento © Jennifer Phillips

Fire and ice

Chicken plumage © Jennifer Phillips

Her eyes spear daggers, slice your heart.

Her heart beats a mercurial rhythm

Cotton candy lips, snake's smile.

Danger lurks in the folds of her clothing,

thinly veiled platitudes drip from her mouth.

She is a guttersnipe dressed as spring lamb.

Her contradictions sway you, curiosity leans closer
but you're not worthy, you're gone.

She'll cut your heart out as soon as look at you.

Cold disdainful stare, beauty in a glance, unreachable,

but pierce the surface, you'll see the lava flow.

Her fire burns hot within yet she's frozen without.

You can't save her, you can only watch as she

Consumes herself, her fever rising inside out. 

Fire and ice burning rivulets from her damaged past.

© Jennifer Phillips (All rights reserved)

Rooster plumage © Jennifer Phillips

Love long distance

Swaying tendrils of earthly plants

reach their yet unopened buds toward the glowing orb of the moon.

Our shared moon – image of our reflected souls.

Yearning – to see, to touch, to know.

Dearest friend of mine, as yet you are intermittent.

Your presence envelops me yet does not.

You are not here. I am not there.

Does it matter which?

We are not together and we are yet to be. Defined.

Our souls search for each other in the light of dreams,

Our words pool in each other’s hearts,

Creating a special home, an abode of dreams, wishes, belief.

In love. We hold to hope, because in love, we are strong.

Our words, being wings, fly us to each other,

on the ether of our dreams.

Crossing distance and space, running across the

studded milkiness of the night sky,

Our souls free their bonds and mingle for a brief embrace

under the soft, blue, thoughtful eye of the moon.

She cares, feeds our brief freedom,

before her light fades in the encroaching stark glow

of the morning sun.

Stark because my spirit flees the harsh morning light

to re-enter and restore my mind to jumbled dreams

before I awake, alone, almost surprised,

that having felt so close to you when asleep,

Why are you not still here in the circle of my arms?

Shake my head, the feeling is gone. Disquiet.

You visited me in the ether of my dreams?

Perhaps … I yearn to know you…

Is it all a dream?

© Jennifer Phillips (All rights reserved)

Bubbles © Jennifer Phillips

Driving under the influence of poetry



Leunig in The Saturday Age - March 16th 2013



The embrace

I would like to lie a long time in your arms,

to become almost as one,

breathing you in,

absorbing your long-forgotten scent,

As if memories by osmosis could enter my skin,

and fuse the fabric of my being.

You and me, me and you,

entwined in an endless litany,

giving to each other in a breath

the warmth of our souls.

Our eyes speak our magic,

a magic that is understood.

The smooth warmth of our skins pressed close,

our hearts beating together, unison.

The darkness does not encroach.

We are soft, like it,

coloured of moonshade

slanting across our nakedness,

naked but safe, enclosed by you.

Fathomless depths in a look,

a picture, a thousand words.

In your eyes I can see your soul.

It shines for me and my being lifts,

and marvels at the wonder

that is you, and me,

entwined in a lingering embrace.

I need to feel you once again,

the reassurance of your arms,

Your warm breath, breathing me in.

Like a drug you are addictive,

I cannot get enough of you.

© Jennifer Phillips (All rights reserved)

Image © Jennifer Phillips

Dahlia

Pink and yellow dahlia © Jennifer Phillips

The day is done

The day is done, and the darkness  

  Falls from the wings of Night,  

As a feather is wafted downward  

  From an eagle in his flight.  

 

I see the lights of the village          

  Gleam through the rain and the mist,  

And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me  

  That my soul cannot resist:  

 

A feeling of sadness and longing,  

  That is not akin to pain,  

And resembles sorrow only  

  As the mist resembles the rain.  

 

Come, read to me some poem,  

  Some simple and heartfelt lay,  

That shall soothe this restless feeling,  

  And banish the thoughts of day.  

 

Not from the grand old masters,  

  Not from the bards sublime,  

Whose distant footsteps echo  

  Through the corridors of Time.

 

For, like strains of martial music,  

  Their mighty thoughts suggest  

Life's endless toil and endeavor;  

  And to-night I long for rest.  

 

Read from some humbler poet,  

  Whose songs gushed from his heart,  

As showers from the clouds of summer,  

  Or tears from the eyelids start;  

 

Who, through long days of labour,  

  And nights devoid of ease,  

Still heard in his soul the music  

  Of wonderful melodies.  

 

Such songs have power to quiet  

  The restless pulse of care,  

And come like the benediction  

  That follows after prayer.  

 

Then read from the treasured volume  

  The poem of thy choice,  

And lend to the rhyme of the poet  

  The beauty of thy voice.  

 

And the night shall be filled with music,  

  And the cares, that infest the day,  

Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,  

  And as silently steal away.

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Sick of pain

They told me two weeks,

but then I was back in hospital.

Now they say four to six weeks.

All I know is that if I move too much in a day

then pain grabs me through the night.

My husband is frustrated, 

sick of me.

I'm sick of me.

I know the lesson now, learned it well,

etched by pain's experience.

If you're ok, then participate - 

Join in everything.

Don't be boring.

I don't want to be boring, anymore.

I want another chance.

I will no longer disappoint.

Lying here in the dark,

getting depressed,

trying to give my body

opportunities to heal...

So I can then participate

fully and without restraint

in the offerings of life.

© Jennifer Phillips (All rights reserved)

Pier © Jennifer Phillips

The glance returned

When you are seven years old,

lying in the back of a station wagon

while your parents play night tennis;

when the knowledge that you are going

to die one day comes through

the rallies, players’ voices,

and songs from a dashboard radio

left on like an audible night light;

you listen hard to the faultless

workings of your life: your heartbeat

muffled under a blanket; your breath,

painting cone-shaped plumes on the glass;

You trade sleep for the ache

of a nameless concept, and feel

the margins of your days begin to close.

You are not prepared for this.

You leave the car and look beyond

the capped, swinging court lights,

blurred by an attendant rain of moths

and flying ants, and you search

the sky for meaning. Linking stars

and smears of low, transparent cloud,

you find a wound in the side

of an overripe fig; a lizard,

its position on a stone betrayed

only when it blinks. But then

a tennis ball clears the fence,

a player laughs, and your parents return

smelling of sweat and cigarettes.

When they ask why you’re up so late;

what you're doing outside the car;

you've not the words for what you know.

On the way home, you lie down

and stare at the backs of their heads,

which are dark, then silver

in the lights of an overtaking lorry.

Your father turns the radio off.

Your mother turns to look at him.

They do not speak. You touch yourself

under the blanket, carefully,

and forget about death for awhile.

When the backs of their heads

flare again, you promise yourself

you’ll remember that moment;

and you do, thirty-two years later,

sitting up in bed, when your wife’s face

is lit by a car pulling into the drive.

In the dark again, you sense her

glance at you. The glance returned,

you ask if she remembers

how old she was, or what she was doing

when her first thoughts of death arrived. 

When she doesn’t answer, you say

Star, fig, lizard, and wait for the lights

of another car to print

the shadows of your heads on the wall.

by Anthony Lawrence

A. Lawrence © Arc Publications

Hearts and hands

You lead me through fields 
of flowers and dreams,

through the purple night 
where scents waft,

and our voices entwine 
on the breeze.

We fall together in the soft soil 
beneath the flowers,

where I sing to you with my heart 
and my hands,

telling of my love for you.

You answer deeply with your heart 
and your hands,

speaking of the happiness 
we find together.

In repose beneath the stars,

under the purple night sky,

in a drifting dream 
of hearts and hands.

© Jennifer Phillips (All rights reserved)

Buddleija © Jennifer Phillips

Connecting dreams

A moment of electricity.
Time slithers through space.
Touch of minds across vast reaches
of neural connection.
Man and woman,
infinitely, intimately, different.
Connecting, understanding in an instant. 

But the meaning gets warped
in the ripples of time.
Needs and wants clamouring
like the grasp of someone drowning,
but clutching too late, at the shards of time…
Electric dreams. 

The course of possible destiny
altered by a turning away.
Where are the connectors?
Electrodes dulled,
no stimulus, rewired.

The path turns and snakes,
a current on the road to space,
toward the stars and magic…
Connection is reality.
Electric dreams.

© Jennifer Phillips (All rights reserved)

Passionfruit flower detail © Jennifer Phillips

Transience

Rainbows and light,

and sparkly water droplets.

Steam rising off roads,

a laugh at a joke.

A glance at someone’s face in the street,

water in my glass.

Ripples on a pond,

Transience.

© Jennifer Phillips (All rights reserved)

Smoky Quartz © Jennifer Phillips

Wasteland

The wind rattles a can across the sparse ground,

no birds sing, there are no trees.

A merciless sky arches above.

Empty above, barren below

Sand blows in eddies and gusts

down the sad dry riverbed.

Pointless and dull,

the eye sees nothing,

no colour, no life,

just heat and quiet,

and an ugly introduced sound:

metal on rock.

What have we wrought?

© Jennifer Phillips (All rights reserved)

Image © Jennifer Phillips

The crowdless man

See him wandering alone,

The crowdless man,

He has no group,

He has no tribe,

He carries his identity in his pocket.

His pocket has a hole in it,

His story has a hole in it,

His tragedy is not a tune you can hum.

His suffering and sacrifice,

They have no handles;

His persecution has no logo,

No shrine, no yardstick.

His joy has no credentials,

His observations have no fixed address;

There are no awards whatsoever.

His gaze and yearning are way

outside the loop,

His pilgrimage has lots of holes in it.

See him wandering alone

Beaming to himself.

by Michael Leunig

Pitted rock at Mimosa Rocks © Jennifer Phillips

View from a hospital window

In the frame of my limited view, four floors up,

lines of scudded clouds lie banked above suburban ordinariness.

Segments of palest blue sky peep through like a promise, like hope.

The early sun is strong, piercing the latent clouds, edges tinged with gold,

and four hot air balloons draw my tired eyes upward, following their graceful path.

Apart from the sky, a single Norfolk pine occupies my view,

birds perch proudly among the tallest branches, fluttering and chatting.

A plane arcs its silver trajectory across the sky, 

while three white birds in triangular formation cross its trail.

My eyelids flutter shut, yet the scene has drawn my attention

away from the painful indignity of the drip

humming balefully on its five-wheeled stand,

which bleeps loudly if occluded, or its plump suspended bag of saline

or medicine is depleted, as it measures drop by drop

its contents into the vein in the crook of my arm.

A trip to the toilet involves dragging the ungainly drip on its stubborn wheels.

I feel pain, guilt, sadness and confusion, that I'm here again,

putting people out of the comfortable ordinariness of their lives.

The dull ache continues, punctuated sometimes by sharp pain.

The cat scan results inconclusive, a low fever persists, at times,

and I must suffer on and struggle on through the days.

I've had enough.

I want to go home and lie in the sun, and breathe the scent of banked purple flowers.

In just half an hour the clouds have already been burnt away by the sun.

Another hot, stinking day it seems,

as the garbage truck on the street below bleeps in time with my occluded drip.

© Jennifer Phillips (All rights reserved)

Banked purple flowers @ Jennifer Phillips

The garden of love

"The garden of Love is green without limit

and yields many fruits other than sorrow or joy.

Love is beyond either condition:

without spring, without autumn, it is always fresh."

by Rumi

Running through the garden © Jennifer Phillips

On the day when the lotus bloomed

On the day when the lotus bloomed, alas, my mind was straying, 
and I knew it not. My basket was empty and the flower remained unheeded.

Only now and again a sadness fell upon me, 
and I started up from my dream and felt a sweet trace of a strange smell in the south wind.

That vague fragrance made my heart ache with longing, 
and it seemed to me that it was the eager breath of the summer seeking for its completion.

I knew not then that it was so near, that it was mine, 
and this perfect sweetness had blossomed in the depth of my own heart.

by Rabindranath Tagore

Buddleja © Jennifer Phillips

Blue flowers

Blue flowers © Jennifer Phillips

Difficult terrain

It began with love and poetry, in conversation

where the language of the body

signals and receives. Time, too, was mentioned - 

casually at first, and then with the passion

they had felt when talk had moved beyond

a common interest to intimacy, where time

was broken down into frames of years, of where

and when they might find each other again.

It soon became a game. For three days

and nights they talked and made of love a story

without closure, telling it from chairs in a pulse

of hard industrial light above the city, and later

in bed, under cover of neon skylight,

the story moved from folly to seriousness

neither wished to claim. Poetry was there

in all they said, in how they moved, alone

or inside each other - free verse for the laughter

and a villanelle to contain, formally, the sense

of loss and longing they could feel and hear

already, as it moved, without pause, over

difficult terrain, leaving markers, taking aim.

Someone left and someone remained.

A space was made in their absence, in their names.

There are no words for what happened in between.

by Anthony Lawrence

Difficult terrain © Jennifer Phillips

Light breaks where no sun shines

Light breaks where no sun shines;

Where no sea runs, the waters of the heart

Push in their tides;

And, broken ghosts with glow-worms in their heads,

The things of light

File through the flesh where no flesh decks the bones.

A candle in the thighs

Warms youth and seed and burns the seeds of age;

Where no seed stirs,

The fruit of man unwrinkles in the stars,

Bright as a fig;

Where no wax is, the candle shows its hairs.

Dawn breaks behind the eyes;

From poles of skull and toe the windy blood

Slides like a sea;

Nor fenced, nor staked, the gushers of the sky

Spout to the rod

Divining in a smile the oil of tears.

Night in the sockets rounds,

Like some pitch moon, the limit of the globes;

Day lights the bone;

Where no cold is, the skinning gales unpin

The winter's robes;

The film of spring is hanging from the lids. 

Light breaks on secret lots, 

On tips of thought where thoughts smell in the rain;

When logics dies,

The secret of the soil grows through the eye,

And blood jumps in the sun;

Above the waste allotments the dawn halts.

by Dylan Thomas

Waterfall Way - near Armidale N.S.W. © Jennifer Phillips

Sunlight

I’m utterly helpless.

I’ll just have to swallow my spit

and adversity, too.

But look!

A distinguished visitor deigns to visit

my tiny, north-facing cell.

Not the chief making his rounds, no.

As evening falls, a ray of sunlight.

A gleam no bigger than a crumpled postage stamp.

I’m crazy about it! Real first love!

I try to get it to settle on the palm of my hand,

to warm the toes of my shyly bared foot.

Then as I kneel and offer it my undevout, lean face,

in a moment that scrap of sunlight slips away.

After the guest has departed through the bars

the room feels several times colder and darker.

This special cell of a military prison

is like a photographer’s darkroom.

Without any sunlight I laughed like a fool.

One day it was a coffin holding a corpse.

One day it was altogether the sea. How wonderful!

A few people survive here.

Being alive is a sea

without a single sail in sight. 

by Ko Un

Sunrise - Tura Beach © Jennifer Phillips

The cosmic landscape

"...A childhood anecdote illustrates the kind of connections he often makes in his pithy poems: the family is hungry, little Ko Un is with his aunt, waiting for his mother to come back from the mudflats, where she has been gathering seablite. Night has fallen and he is clinging to his aunt’s back under a starry sky.

'Then I noticed for the first time the stars in the night sky. The cosmic landscape struck me for the first time. Only I mistook the stars for fruit dangling from the sky. So I began to beg her to pick me some stars, weeping.' 

That first error of mistaking stars for food was the vague beginning of a poet who would later sing the stars as a dream. ..."

Barry Hill quoting Ko Un in "Wild Pilgrim: Meeting Ko Un" - The Monthly - November 2012

Guinea fowl plumage © Jennifer Phillips

The kitchen of give and take

First you must climb into the battered old

saucepan of love

Where you will marinate in the sauce

of sex.

Then you shall be covered with the wine

of faith,

The oil of compassion

And the salt of suffering and sin.

Now you are tossed in the pan of chaos

And seared by the flame of truth.

You are carved by the knife of compromise

And served with the spoon of duty

Onto the plate of acceptance

And garnished with the herbs of humility.

At this point you may well say grace.

by Michael Leunig

Small pot © Jennifer Phillips

Love is not angelic

Love is not angelic. It is not divorced from the flesh. It is carnal. Love is skin, bone, blood and fluid. It is the five senses - taste, touch, smell, hearing and sight - that form an ocean within, roaring, washing over, ebbing and flowing, rising and falling on the human tide. You can float and you can drown.

by Warwick McFadyen in "A Collector of love songs" - March 2, 2013 - SMH

Stacked rocks at Mimosa Rocks © Jennifer Phillips

The threshold of this life

"I was not aware of the moment when I first crossed the threshold of this life. What was the power that made me open out into this vast mystery like a bud in the forest at midnight? When in the morning I looked upon the light I felt in a moment that I was no stranger in this world, that the inscrutable without name and form had taken me in its arms in the form of my own mother. Even so, in death the same unknown will appear as ever known to me. And because I love this life, I know I shall love death as well. The child cries out when from the right breast the mother takes it away to find in the very next moment its consolation in the left one."

by Rabindranath Tagore

Orchid at Marysville © Jennifer Phillips

Sleepless

I lie awake in my bed

straight, like an arrow or a dart.

Hoping to spear sleep

through its soft white underbelly.

Yet thoughts keep circling

like restless swallows

through my troubled mind.

I hear a train rumble like thunder

along the tracks in the distance

and pierce the night with its shriek.

City-bound bodies face the tracks in the morning,

and so do the hurt souls in the night.

Now that the West Gate Bridge is fenced,

the desperate instead catch the front of passing trains.

These thoughts will not help me sleep, so

I seek solace in breathing in time

to the breath of my other, as he slumbers

this night, deeply and peacefully.

A calmness settles, as I listen to the night birds awaken

become morning birds, 

and sing me into the day.

© Jennifer Phillips (All rights reserved)

Old train at Pioneer Settlement - Swan Hill © Jennifer Phillips

Jaded

You can love someone in your way,

but your way can only go so far

along the way, and the wheels start to fall off

A screw here, a cog there, a puncture.

You get tired, become stuck in a rut.

You need a way out, but the funnel's blocked

You reach out, and grasp empty space

You bang your head, but there's brick

You ask, you plead, you seek assurance

You get a glib promise, slowly eroded.

Trust fades, you go through the days' careworn emotions

You chase, he walks away, connections crumble.

He leads, you follow, you try and he doesn't see.

Your heart stays true, but the cost is erosive.

You try and try and try, and it improves for a time.

But where in life can it all just flow?

Do our lives' responsibilities preclude us from true happiness?

Are we marching blind to our decrepitude?

What is it all for?

Seeking a little magic, a little hope, and love's bliss.


© Jennifer Phillips (All rights reserved)

Lake Catani - Mt. Buffalo National Park © Jennifer Phillips

TV Shows I happily became addicted to

The Big Gig

Doug Anthony Allstars

The Goodies

Monty Python's Flying Circus

Little Britain

Peep Show

Wilfred
Life Begins

Vicar of Dibley
Angels in America

The Morgana Show

Downton Abbey

So You Think You Can Dance (United States)

Time Team
Please Like Me

Smoke screens

I would come to you in the old, high way of love,

take your hands in mine,

Run my fingers, trace the arches of your brow,

I would stretch the smile lines concertinaed at your eyes.

I would look deep into the pool of your soul - 

its slowly turning, softly spinning, precious depths.

I would kiss you on the lips and taste love's touch,

Find the truth in our connection, years' embrace in one.

Together we'd merge gracefully,

as wind sways the trees,

as our breaths expel hot urgent

smoke screens on the sky.

© Jennifer Phillips (All rights reserved)

Fireplace © Jennifer Phillips

We'll be fine
Promethean heat
Heart-beaten

Us

Last night while looking at the sky

I saw a little planet die.

It died and fell without a fuss;

I wondered whether it was us,

Or part of us that I had seen

Disintegrate. It could have been.

by Michael Leunig.

Red moon glow © Jennifer Phillips

My son's fish

Fish made by my 6 year old son © Jennifer Phillips

My favourite things

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens

Bright copper kettles and warm woollen mittens

Brown paper packages tied up with strings

These are a few of my favorite things

Cream coloured ponies and crisp apple streudels

Doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles

Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings

These are a few of my favorite things

Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes

Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes

Silver white winters that melt into springs

These are a few of my favorite things

When the dog bites

When the bee stings

When I'm feeling sad

I simply remember my favorite things

And then I don't feel so bad

by Robert Wise, sung by Maria from the movie "The Sound of Music"

Snow creature - Mt. Baw Baw © Jennifer Phillips

Things we say when we are small

My mother kept a few things that my younger brother and I said when we were children.

Me:

• 3 years: "Mummy, why don't cattle go in catalogues?"
• 6 years: Observing ice crystals in jelly: "My jelly is isolated".
• 9 years: Playing clarinet: "Plaisir d'Amour must be about crusaders who wore armour".
• 11 years: "Is Trigonometry something to do with guns?"

My brother:

• 2 years: "I'm not a son, I'm a moon!"
• 3 years: "The sky doesn't fall down because the trees hold it up".
• 4 years: "If you get burned you turn into a gorilla."
• 5 years: Busily cutting up paper litter to make confetti: "My arms are getting tired with all this literary stuff".
• 10 years: "People never seem to have obtuse appendix, just acute."
• 11 years: "Today in Science we learned about sour vanilla". (Salmonella)

Moon

The milky moon shines brightly
as does the eternal Goddess.
Giving, lighting – 
pale luminescence to the souls of men.

Gliding above the clouds with sweet majesty.
A watchful orb – 
delineating the temper of the skies.

Serene above the passing clouds,
Shining cold blue rays of steel
to the dark and shapeless forms
laid out below.
Earth, dusk, dank, dark.

Look up – light, purity, hope, revelation.
Serenity, eternity - 
The moon, Goddess of Light.
Font of love, maker of tides.

© Jennifer Phillips (All rights reserved)

Moon © Jennifer Phillips

Wolf, Leopard, Falcon, Fawn

For you there is more to the slow liquid dancing of my tongue

than working for sighs at the heart of your loins.

Each time I part the moist petals of the larkspur

and open the folds of the sealed spider orchid,

I drink the silver threads of your waters;

I float my own mouth across your swell.

Your taste is the spittle of timberwolves,

flecked with the blood of a wounded fawn;

your scent is a black leopard hunting the wind.

When I trace with my lips your flower's vein,

your breath startles in my hair like a small rare bird.

You open and close, hiding and blooming

like a scarlet sea anemone at my touch.

As I kneel before you, speaking in tongues,

my language is thick with the oil of you.

We are sacrificial, we are beautiful, our call

is the call of the Peregrine Falcon, and no matter what happens

from this moment to the next, there will always

be wild animals to which we can compare ourselves:

the wolf that leaves its shadow on the bed;

the leopard whose eyes have been cast in fire;

the sleeping fawn in a thicket of blood ...

And the falcon, riding an intricate wind, has woven

its accurate flight through the dreamscape of our room.

As I lift my head, it circles and screams, its wings fan over us,

and as we lose ourselves again

in the salty puzzle of our bodies, we listen, but the wind

and the falcon are far beyond our hearing.

by Anthony Lawrence

Tiny boat

God bless this tiny little boat

And me who travels in it;

It stays afloat for years and years

And sinks within a minute.

And so the soul in which we sail

Unknown by years of thinking

Is deeply felt and understood

The minute that it's sinking.

by Michael Leunig

Boating at Sorrento © Jennifer Phillips

Budding

I intend to start this new month with an image of as yet unopened buds. This month holds new potential.

Yesterday was my son's seventh birthday, and it gave me cause to reflect that seven years ago I had given birth, required quite some repairing, and here seven years later my body again bears the scars of life.

I think I have so far had a life well lived, and as I approach the 'middle age' I think I am not going to bother so much as I have done in the past with what others might think of me. I know who I am and where I've been. I'm just going to put it out there, and if it resonates with someone, then that's wonderful, and thank you.

In every challenge there is a lesson. I have had many physical, mental and emotional challenges, particularly in the last two years. I have decided I am going to be one of those really tough old birds who outlive everyone because I feel like I have had enough suffering already. Enough said, here is my picture of new beginnings:

Amaryllis belladonna buds (Naked lady lily) © Jennifer Phillips