20 Nov
MOMENTARY
Just before dawn the roses appear
white, ghosts of the blooms I know
them to be, then blush pink as day
glows.
I catch such moments, fresh and
personal, like fish you catch on
your own hook when you are nine,
to admire the colours glistening
on the line.
Julian O’Dea
17 Nov
Cape Hunting Dog
To gorge on flesh, to choke
and regurgitate, with squirting
blood and soft marrow down
the throat, again and again,
tooth set in jawbone driven
into bone, canine maw wet,
sticky, matted fur, tooth as
awl, bone as whetstone,
mouthfeel is all.
Julian O’Dea
16 Nov
Yawning in the morning
the puppy greets the day,
wide to bite the sun like
a ball that’s now in play.
See him stand and stretch,
shaking out his fur,
a bundle of golden hay
with here and there a burr.
Julian O’Dea
9 Nov
Pageantry of the Australian Bush
the Papilio butterfly opens
and closes stained glass
window wings,
a living diptych
an Intellagama lizard,
“a water dragon”,
settles like rock on rock in
its banded, sedimentary skin
an echidna marches past
with desert slowness,
a phalanx of spines
scarab beetles sport bronzed
armour, elytra, and scutella …
“little shields”
birds cry out the boasts
of Greeks and Trojans
to the air
raptors, in the form of black
kites, bring Promethean
fire to the grassland,
and their prey begin to run
Julian O’Dea
29 Oct
SEABIRD HUNTERS
In the Western Isles they farewell
the day last, short of warmth,
and the arable,
and even of surnames,
a smattering of island clans.
The sea hisses all night quenching
the sun, as the seabirds nestle
among rocks and grass, until the young
can fall like snow down the cliff
to settle into their own life.
Beehive dwellings of stone
have waited for the men,
who will build beehives of salted,
oily birds for sale, and read their
Gaelic bible and trust in ropes below,
lest they fall with the snow.
Julian O’Dea
27 Oct
WARMER MONTHS
The heady smell of garden hose spray,
of wattle pollen up your nose like snuff.
The spider outside with her fat, spangled
abdomen, swinging in a leaf hammock
in our garden, full of white caviar.
Gum bark clinging grey, hanging on like
a last hope.
Cries from the district swimming pool,
a distant screen door and a shout,
sounds of heedless youth.
Though I have not forgotten the breeze
that fluttered your dress, flustered,
flattered you that summer day.
We eat outside and open doors
for the warm, welcome air.
Closer to nature.
Too close to nature?
A too friendly magpie flies around our
front room. Visions of blood
and feathers on a mirror.
But it finds its way outside.
We all want to escape the parlour.
Julian O’Dea
26 Sep
PENCIL
Pencil thin.
Sharp but untried.
I met you in a tutorial,
your voice first
from down the table,
then the author
of that voice.
The persona. The person.
The body.
Your colours, black
and white, and a grey
skirt. A pencil skirt.
Pencil grey.
A scholar, without
a stoop. Straight. Linear.
Apart from schoolgirl
curves.
How to hold you?
How to fit you in my hand?
To start to write.
Julian O’Dea
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