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Ghost gums, Regatta days.

The canopies slowly dance and sway
above their dappled trunks,
the percussive flourish through
wind tossed leaves, an ephemeral
emerald sea above

Nothing more, moves inside the frame
of this window, no pain could diminish
the powder blue sky or cloud,
all is static inside this shroud
of curtained soft screen and silk
which, tenderly touches up the edges

As if to mould the scene
that lies, between my mind and eye
and wandering air unseen-
there is a fence , sun bleached
and brittle dry
that keeps all causal observers,
such as I

At arm upon arm, from harm
and at the distance of sky
beyond which, a heat shimmered future
writhes like a swarm,
and there, in the wind of evening:
heard just the rumoured echo, of a storm.

Style / type: 
Structured: Western
Review Request (Intensity): 
I appreciate moderate constructive criticism
Last few words: 
Summer, Tasmania January 2016, waiting for a storm, staring out of a window at the mountains, listening to Mogwai. Today is a show holiday, for a regatta that barely anyone in the state attends. A throwback from the colonial days, and thoughts of Henly perhaps. Meanwhile, the oldest rainforest on earth, the last remnant of Gonwana is being ravaged by wildfire: http://gu.com/p/4g588/sbl . PS bear in mind this uses English spellings, apologies to all Hyperborean American Aglophiles up there.
Editing stage: 

Comments

Loved the description, of the view from the window.
Warm ways multi colours I love the changes in the Gum trees they are really an artists palette.
Take care and keep writing , Yours as always Ian..

.
Give critique to help keep Neopoet great.
Unconditional love to you all.
"Learn to love yourself first"
Yours as always, Ian.T, Sparrow, and Yenti

Finally raining! Yay for that, now there are a host of new colours released by the rain. Thanks for your encouragement - take care.

Chris.

Chris Hall - Tasmania

Grossbooted draymen rolled barrels dullthudding out of Prince's stores and bumped them up on the brewery float. On the brewery float bumped dullthudding barrels rolled by grossbooted draymen out of Prince's stores.

author comment

Beautiful picture you have painted here. it reminded me of the red woods in Santa Barbara California.
the days are filled with shade and the blue of the sky can hardly be seen and the nights are as dark as the Black forest in Germany. Your lovely poem has sparked all these memories of my travels.
Thank you!

Eddie C.

LIFE ISN'T ABOUT WAITING FOR THE STORM TO PASS
IT'S ABOUT LEARNING HOW TO DANCE IN THE RAIN.
VIVIAN GREENE

Glad it could evoke some nice memories for you, sounds like you have lived much and travelled wide, the stuff of poetical inspiration - looking forward to reading your work.

Thanks and take care,

Chris.

Chris Hall - Tasmania

Grossbooted draymen rolled barrels dullthudding out of Prince's stores and bumped them up on the brewery float. On the brewery float bumped dullthudding barrels rolled by grossbooted draymen out of Prince's stores.

author comment

excellent language use!
not a vignette
a phrase
hanging in the wind like a mobile too ponder

a truly artist write!

the old poetry was commercialistic
Harlequin is making a movie up here
brooke sheild and others...the old hollywood
greats love our city..we are so laizes faire
readily standing in as extras and moving
on with our business
the north already .this city a movies movie
all of us extras in our dramas..
snowflakes fell today
the reason they want that footage
they shot when there should have been
snow..to no avail
so they returned and got the perfect shot
today..beautiful...

I travelled in the late eighties the west and mid west
saw the desert..the rainforest...plains..
yellowstone..black mountian ..hoodoos
idaho rolling seas of corn and wheat
cattle..miles of straight highway while a violet hot
summer eastern sky climbed and the ambeint golden
sun trailed behind us...

watched vids of aircraft lifting rubber refill drop tanks
for forest fires on helos cable slung beneath the great
helicopter bodies...watched water bombers in vids
shedding a wing like overweight dancers thrown
on angles into valleys no bomber would attempt
the leg on a weak knee given out and the plummet
with crew into immortality
watched firestorms consume the men and homes
on centuries old hills and box end canyons that
were prevented from burning a natural exfoliation
and re birth of the ash and seed cracking process
for the new and tender fresh shoots then the old
brittle bones of tinderbox variety

modern man....does not understand the process
that he is but a singular visitor in the great natural
establishment of natures embellishment
they only protect where man lives...abutted to
this precarious perch

chances are we may wear a funny grin
whenever luck comes into view

we cannot be nature
nor tame
what we mere think we can claim

story long ago...the botanical gardens
had a plant...rare...it had never flowered
germinated
and the cooling system broke
the heat rose to one hundred and eight degrees
or something like this
and the rare plant species bloomed
flowered..blossomed

fires are like this..pine cones cannot be opened
by age weather rot...nor squirrel
and after a fire the great flowers come nourished
by the ash and openess where once sunshine
was held at bay like a sash...

seedlings freed....

the lightning the starter of good things
..

an excellently written poem chris
your writing is taking off
finding a beacon of a muse
or creativity

we are just correspondents
like plades the elder at pompei
the story is the worth
...

Pliny the elder!

More like, correspondence with a sufi mystic poet in your replies! Love the dive into the subterranean unconscious terrain and all the allusions observed - like the interior monologue of Dedalus writ large outside, feel like I 've been round the world and back again through strands of time, and stands of pine. Thanks for sharing, amazing how things can be so far apart, yet the same.
Funny you mentioned the filming, I used to live up in Bowen (North Queensland - (in honor of HRH Queen Vic.) - a small town that was completely overtaken by the film industry during the filming of "Australia" with Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman et al - all in the "quality resort" opposite my dingy sherry drenched book littered digs, wandering round the streets, all the locals decked out in Victorian clobber and finery, and replica ships in the harbour, drifting around taking notes, in my astonished stupor - surreal times. They actulally made a faux sign on the side of a hill on the way in to town that read: "BowenWood" - then after all the cast and crew and hubbub had dispersed, and the town settled back to it's salty quiet normalcy.
Overladen bees - that's what the choppers careering towards the fires seemed to me, chopping at the sky awkwardly.

Small pressie for you, another quirky film from the old country, these guys were anarchic comic brilliance:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTvAUais_Vo

Thanks Esker, you always give me plenty to think about.

Chris Hall - Tasmania

Grossbooted draymen rolled barrels dullthudding out of Prince's stores and bumped them up on the brewery float. On the brewery float bumped dullthudding barrels rolled by grossbooted draymen out of Prince's stores.

author comment

...brooke sheilds...others...always something going on...
i have no desire to be an extra..I would rather wander free then stand about..
I remember a long time ago waiting for a meeting to begin..summer
that dust time..in a valley of buidlings I was laying on the grass watching the
wind patterns in the ivy like aurora borelais...I tend to like wave patterns!
over head me lay ing there..hands behind head on summers warm afternoon
grass the bees flew over me....in a straight line....went straight up the wall of
ivy atop the buildings edge to somewhere...one after another....Now I grew up
with vietnam..watched the footage.....over and over each night....and ur right
like bees....carrying pollen the bees...but laden....on a mission..purposeful....i remember
the fire planes....got into watching that from that movie 'Always" Richard dreyfuss..Holly Hunter..vavoom! and John Goodman! kind of a take off from spencer traceys movie back in the
war days when he plays a ghost spirit guiding new pilots!!! anyway...the vids had
an old craft doing this impossible angle into a canyon...sure you can make the drop...
but the craft...old..worn...the wing comes off..the craft and crew perish....there are rules
of flight...like driving vehicles...speed velocity..ineftia...like poets...pushing the rush or
draw of addictions....there are physics to it all....burroughs made it...plath didnt....the dude whom wrote fear and loathing in vegas....hunter s thompson didnt...and many more....cause...they wanted more....and there is no more...but that line....excellent write! thank U chris!

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