Poetry

But will you wake for pity’s sake ! Hope for 2025 Colleen Keating

colleen Poetry ,
FOR 2025

A Sleep of Prisoners — Christopher Fry

The call to awake is one that I relate to.

A SLEEP OF PRISONERS

Dark and cold we may be, but this

Is no winter now. The frozen misery

Of centuries breaks, cracks, begins to move;

The thunder is the thunder of the floes,

The thaw, the flood, the upstart Spring.

Thank God our time is now when wrong

Comes up to face us everywhere,

Never to leave us till we take

The longest stride of soul we ever took.

Affairs are now soul size.

The enterprise

Is exploration into God.

Where are you making for? It takes

So many thousand years to wake,

But will you wake for pity’s sake!

-Christopher Fry

A Little Book of Japanese Contentments by Erin Nimi Longhurst

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A wonderful find on the last day of 2024.

Some reminders on the  cultural wisdom and practices in achieving

a balanced, peaceful, and fulfilling life.  This is a valuable beginning for 2025.

“A Little Book of Japanese Contentments: Ikigai, Forest Bathing, Wabi-sabi, and More” by “Erin Nimi Longhurst” is an insightful exploration of Japanese concepts that promote well-being and a fulfilling life. The book delves into various traditions and philosophies, such as”*ikigai” (a reason for being), “forest bathing” (immersing oneself in nature), and “wabi-sabi” (appreciating beauty in imperfection). Longhurst blends cultural insights with practical advice, encouraging readers to incorporate these principles into their daily lives to cultivate a sense of peace, contentment, and connection to the world around them.

10 Lessons from “A Little Book of Japanese Contentments”

1. Discover Your Ikigai:
Identify your passion, mission, vocation, and profession to find your unique reason for being that brings joy and fulfillment.

2. Engage in Forest Bathing:
Spend time in nature to reduce stress and enhance mental clarity, allowing the natural world to replenish your spirit.

3. Embrace Wabi-sabi:
Appreciate the beauty of imperfection and transience, recognizing that flaws can add character and depth to life.

4. Practice Mindfulness:
Cultivate present-moment awareness through meditation or simple daily rituals, fostering a deeper connection to your experiences.

5. Nurture Simplicity:
Simplify your life by decluttering both your physical space and mental load, allowing for greater tranquility and focus on what truly matters.

6. Prioritize Relationships:
Invest time in building and maintaining meaningful connections with family and friends, as social bonds contribute significantly to happiness.

7. Celebrate Small Joys:
Find contentment in everyday moments, recognizing that joy can be found in simple pleasures and routine activities.

8. Adopt a Growth Mindset:
Embrace challenges as opportunities for growth and learning, fostering resilience and a positive outlook on life.

9. Connect with Tradition:
Explore Japanese cultural practices and rituals that promote well-being, integrating them into your own life for a sense of grounding.

10. Be Grateful:
Foster an attitude of gratitude by regularly reflecting on the positive aspects of your life, enhancing overall contentment and happiness.

These lessons from “A Little Book of Japanese Contentments” highlight the value of cultural wisdom and practices in achieving a balanced, peaceful, and fulfilling life.

Holiday ramblings, Sonnet style by Colleen Keating December 2024

colleen Poetry , , ,

 

Day 1
Indecision  or turning tide

The ocean is a field. The ocean is windy 
wild, kicking, a two year old in tantrum.
The ocean begins to hiss like fired lard.
Waves swirl, twirl, like a mosh pit
of crowded concert goers. Its white plumes
and spindrift ringing the air . They remind me
of your rumpled hair on rising from the bed
uncertain of the day ahead.

Where is the moon, you ask, to parent
the tide? Turmoil is the nemesis of the mind. 
The mind is a field. The mind is windy, 

wild, turning here, turning there. I cannot
help but wish for a moon-god to marshal
your stirrings, directing their erratic flow.

Colleen Keating

 * * * * * * * * * * * 

Day 2.

 

interconnection

She walks out towards the lake 
precariously like a sleepwalker ambles 
when they don’t really want to face the day.
Thick fog steals the horizon. 
Large pines on the other side misted-in
show a ghostly giant command
peering out like Tolkien’s ents.
Her gaze has the gravitas of other worlds.  

How to feel joy in this time of joy? Hildegard’s 
words grooved like an old LP imprint her mind
i cannot break bread except as i am broken.

In the reeds a visiting spoonbill wades, its wide
beak raking the mud .Two pied stilts swoop at it
over and over with barking noise.

Colleen Keating

* * * * * * * * * * * *

 

Day 3.

Put in our place

The lake is mirrored-calm, still untouched
by morning noise. 
The heat is already building for a summers day.
The visiting spoonbill, not deterred is back.
The black swans silhouetted glide peacefully. 
Plovers are themselves always with a voice
for those who encroach in their territory. 
Under the large pines usually full of roosting 

cormorants all chatting, it is eerily quiet. 
They have flown off for the day. 
Only then do our feet begin to stick to the ground, 
We are are walking like people with lead in their shoes.
We realise they have been busy before they left.  
The result is like a glue, stuck around our sneakers, clotted 
with leaves and dirt.

Colleen Keating

* * * * ** * * * * * * * * 

Day 4.

Pause

An online group I belong to 
ask for a word for 2025. 
All the normal ones light up
like electric bulbs in my head–
gratitude, listen, dream.
I was out walking by the lake
and decided to pause to watch 
a white egret fishes the tidal zone.

Pause. I thought how much more 
it gives me focus. I see its pick-axe
precision and stealthful stepping.  
I see how a caught pilchard wriggles down 
its long neck and I hear wild whispers
of the wind in the swamp oaks 
and to make sense of todays turmoil 
the pause is a purposeful strategy.

Colleen Keating

* * * * * * * * * * * * * 

 

Day 5

Road to Jericho

RIP Michael Leunig  1946 -2024

(Thank you for reminding us of our soul 
and the angels over and over
and  thanks for so often being our conscience. )

it is rough uneven, familiar pot-holes 
no surprise. what shocks more is lack
of safety, the unknown enemy lying low.
So many rustling angels are missed,
Leunig said, in the hurry to get from A to B 
A cry for help would hardly 
be heard over the cicada shrill 
of this hot summers day.

Even as I conduct their bush song 
my hands rise and fall in rhythm 
like the oceans rolling crests and troughs
reaching crescendo of an alleluia chorus 
there are still the troughs and life’s journey
is only as good as staying on the way.

Colleen Keating

While shepherds washed their sock by night
all seated on the ground
the angel of the Lord came down
and no one looked around ML
Just wrote this out till I get a clearer photo of the December calendar.

Our last calendar December cartoon. RIP Michael Leunig and thank –you

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

Day 6.

   

Butcher bird  and Magpie enjoying a drink with their  careful nod of thanks.

The Perfect Pact

The bird bath stands in clear view on the terrace
like a set up eco stage for insects to skim, 
wildlife  including the possum passing by 
and birds. We insist like a UN peace treaty
all birds have an equal right and must share
Sharon’s yellow flowered bush adds filtered shade
and a place to perch. the bird bath stands  
like an icon of empathy and sharing.

And it is not one way – we enjoy the whoosh
of wings fanning the air, flamboyant colours
of show off fluttering their feathers and bedazzling us 
the songs they sing in all their varied pitch and tone.
Knowing the pairs now why is it when one is missing 
we feel our own fragility? 

Colleen Keating

* * * * * * * * * * * 

Day 7

 

The dry sandy walk to Karagi Point slows 
like a trek across a desert. At the far edge
the first thing we hear a frenzy of chirps, 
insistent and wild flapping of wings. 
Hundreds of little Terns cloud the sky across
the fenced-in breeding ground.Their flighty 
path of lift-ups and dives with tight turns 
and somersaults more precise than aerogliders. 

Then one darts down to the sand, a dangle 
of food in its beak and the sand comes alive
with beige coloured chicks. 
We stand there mesmerised,
marvelling at the endurance of this migratory
bird. Its tiny heart thrumming against the wind. 

Colleen Keating

 * * * * * * * * * * * 

Bird Talk   on our Normanhurst terrace.

They call me King . Aren’t I gorgeous.?
They don’t seem to mind me perched on their  herbal garden

 

Waiting.   Just playing my cards. Sitting on their clothes line
near their back door means they will see me soo.
I am getting them trained!

We are learning to share here on the terrace.

 

 

 

Two Canticles by Colleen Keating published in Rochford Street Journal Issue 40 2024

colleen Poetry

Rochford Street Review

Issue 40.  2024:2

   

Two Canticles

At a cottage by the sea I tackle Francis Webb, curious about

his poetry from Cap and Bells. Outside a wild spring ocean’s

curled waves tussle on the tide, comb to the edge, like spoonbills

probing every squint of sand and wrack. The horizon

 

is drawn-in, appropriate for this day in this ruptured world.

The sun finds thin spots to break through clouds, blades the sea

with thousands of stars and as quickly is blocked. In his poems

Francis tools words in obscurity and I must wait for the rare 

 

glimmer to shine through, to touch their thousand stars before

they meld into his shadowed world. With torch and compass

I grope through the labours of Hospital Night and wait in the

dark for the sound of winged ones in the swaddled air of his

 

suite Ward Two. I once met a Benedictine nun who knew 

Francis Webb, as an escapee from Parramatta Mental Hospital.

He knocked at her convent back door. Frail, lost, clutching

a book of poetry. Eyes eminently human, beaconed his ragged

 

struggle. His voice garbled: I am not seeking money or food 

but peace. He scribbled out for her his poem Five Days Old.

Then a lonely, derelict figure slouched out the gate. His words

frisk the heroic-journey, explorers’ struggle, like one who holds

 

a shell, turns it over and over for light, shots of colour, as he

tackles the one-journey common to us all. His poems of 

The Canticle echo another Francis who wrote Il Cantico, 

who praised glimpses of brother sun  and sister moon through

 

tender, frayed clouds, who walked barefoot, high-walled Assisi: 

its olive groves, vineyards, lanes, paths of cobbled stone, 

searching too for peace. Falling on his knees, face in his hands

he humbly made himself its instrument, finding the meaning 

 

only in the search. He threw off worldly garb, gold and plumes

donned a court jester’s cap and bells, reverberating touch of 

birdsong his bedrock. Through a darkling glass are two canticles

hundreds of years apart. Each Francis dances on fear’s altar. Both 

 

be fools, taunted, for gnawing life to the bone. Both seeing beauty

in the tiny not the immense. Outside, flocks of sea gulls skim 

the southerly, skate on the edge. I listen to their skirl on the air, 

wayfarers, like the ocean in its unceasing quest. 

Colleen Keating

Winner of the Phillipa Holland Poetry 2024 with Eastwood/Hills FAW (Fellowship of Australian Writers)

———————————–

Colleen Keating is a Sydney poet. Her writing explores the wonder and paradox of nature with the harsh realities of life, justice, equality and the increasing threat to our natural environment. Her poem, Fifth Symphony was recently awarded Highly commended in the Poetic Christi Press poetry competition and published in the new Anthology A New Day Dawns 2024. Colleen has published six collections of poetry, including two award-winning verse novels, Hildegard of Bingen: A poetic journey and Olive Muriel Pink: her radical & idealistic life. Her newly published book is The Dinner Party: A poetic reflection. (2023) All are available through Ginninderra Press. Colleen writes on Ku-ring-gai land in Sydney and Darkinjung on the Central Coast NSW.

Also welcomed to be published by Michael Griffith.author of Cap and Bells

Michael Griffith: Home Page- Literature and Life Spring 2025
Michael Griffith’s Official Literature Site

 

michaelgriffith1
November 7, 2024 at 11:47 am

Hello Colleen, I love this poem! It captures so much of the essence of Francis Webb’s passion and the direction of his own search. In terms of our current poetry sessions – Poetry’s Job- I feel this is a perfect poem for illustrating how poetry here (your poetry and the poetry of the poet you celebrate) give voice to the quest for wholeness in a difficult, tumultous world. Your own beautiful observations of nature carry me back to what we were saying just yesterday about Jane Hirschfield’s recognition that the real source of nourishment for her own search is the immediate:

Can admire with two eyes the mountain

actual, recalcitrant, shuffling its pebbles, sheltering foxes and beetles.

—

Can make black-eyed peas and collards.

Can make, from last year’s late-ripening persimmons, a pudding.

Thank you Colleen!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

‘Brilliant’ Colleen!   Your writing demonstrates the ache and artistry of Scott Fitzgerald

with your ability to tie the lives of two people together over that vast distance of time. 

I am sure Michael Leunig would have gathered inspiration for one of his works

from your ‘Two Canticles’ if he was still with us. 

Your writing is much deserving of a broader audience.

Congratulations!

Michael Linich  (Dr. Michael Linich Lecturer, Science Education at University of Newcastle NSW. Australia. 

Eucalypt Issue 37 2024 ed. Julie Thorndyke

colleen Finding Zen, Poetry , , ,

 

 

Thank you to the editor Julie Thorndyke for an exquisite production of the latest Eucalypt .

I can always feel the love and care in the selection and  placement  of  the tanka on the page

which of cousre enriches each one tanka.

Your work is appreciated. 

I am proud to be included with so many fine Tanka writers and  sensitive work  in this latest issue. 

 

 

     

 the wet sand

of the ebbing tide

reflects a pink dawn

my bare feet encounter

the first touch of spring

Colleen Keating

Thrilled to see Pip Griffin and Dr Andy Hede as two of my Tanka friends included in the latest Eucalypt

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another favourite of my tanka

pink glow

behind silver grey clouds

waiting

medical reports

still to be read

Colleen Keating

 

 

Launch of the new poetry collection The Book of Jerimiah by Beatriz Copello

colleen Poetry , , ,

   

What an energising and vibrant launch we attended last week. Beatriz Copello’s new peotry collection

The Book of jeremiah is a powerful book for our times.  There was a great crowd at the newly renovated Gleebooks

and it was a wonderful evening of poetry, reflection wine friendship , lots of chatter with poet friends and laughter.

Thank you Beatriz and Gleebooks for a lovely poetry evening.

 

   

 

A Sensory Journey: Haku Down Under Anthology 2024 ed. Carole Harrison and Sue Courney

colleen Poetry , , , , , ,

I am very proud and happy to be included in the beautiful new anthology,  A Sensory Journey, Haiku Down Under Anthology with my haiku.  Thank you to the editors Carole Harrison and Sue Courtney for the beautiful presentation.  

holiday cottage

under a sickle moon

a lone dingo howls

Colleen Keating

 

 

This photo is the nearest I can find to describe my experience except I was alone in the country holiday cottage for the week ( my choice to write) and it was a dark night hence a small cresent moon only and the dingos howled and howled and I thught a pack was just up on a hill nearby.. It did scare me a little at the time but I have read since  that there is nothing to be afraid of as the howling is for a mate. And they don’t come for humans that are not trying to corner them in some way so I tried to show  apprehension in the haiku. I hope it works  that the reader is not sure!!!

Dunera Boys – exhibition at the State Library of NSW after a visit by Colleen Keating

colleen General, Poetry ,

 

 

The Dunera Boys

Although born and educated in Australia and a valued dairy farmer in the Bega Valley on the Far South Coast  of NSW my uncle Augustine Behl, a young man in his early thirties  was detained at the beginning of World War 2 ,  as he was of German dissent.  He was declared an alien in his own homeland . However not  rounded up and imprisoned with hundreds of other men because he was essential for the food production line as a daily farmer.  Rarely did he come into town . Tuesdays my aunt and two cousins came in for shopping and came to Nannas where we stayed in the Christmas holidays.

When he was in town, it was to sell and buy at the Sale Yards. However I am not sure if he was forbidden in town socially or if he chose not to come in.  He was a very silent man and spoke few words to anyone.

It was at his property that I heard my first classical record and saw a record playing. It was Mario Lanser singing The Student Prince and I was blown away. His parents had brought the music from their homeland. and at the time it was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard. In a way I kept looking up, thinking it was coming from heaven.

Hence my interest in the story of the Dunera Boys  a very interesting exhibition, curated by Louise Anemaat, Seumas Spark and andrew Trigg presently at the NSW State Library. 

 The Dunera Boys  

They have become know as  the Dunera Boys they sailed to Australia on the Dunera. 

The story goes that when Winston Churchill came to power in Britain in May 1940, one of the first decisions of his government was to arrest, intern and ultimately deport thousands of ‘enemy aliens’ to Canada and Australia for fear that they might secretly help to orchestrate an invasion of Britain. On 10 July 1940, the British troop ship HMT Dunera departed Liverpool, Britain, with about 2120 male ‘enemy aliens’ on board. Many of the internees were Jewish and had fled to Britain as refugees from Hitler’s regime. Others had been there for years and had made their lives there. Though the Dunera internees did not know it when they left England, they were destined for Australia.

 

In powerful artworks, internees convey the experience of internment rather than the reality of its lived experience. In this artwork by Georg Teltscher, ghostly hands seem to be disappearing in an unsettled ocean, or rising up from a foaming landscape.

Conditions on the Dunera were dire. 

The ship was grossly overcrowded,

men crammed into appalling quarters.

Toilets overflowed, poisoned the stale air. 

British soldiers guarding the boys

treated their charges with brutality, 

abusing them 

stealing their possessions. 

Throwing their bags overboard

The Dunera docked in Sydney 

The internees, herded on to trains 

ended in the remote, rural town of Hay.

In drought, everywhere was dry 

flat and full of dust. 

Relentless heat and swarms of flies 

added to the internees’ sense of dislocation. 

So unfamiliar was the landscape to European eyes

that many labelled the Hay plains a ‘desert’. 

To try and make sense of the world 

and their place in it they created friendships, 

schools of learning , 

different classes were set up

they educated each other.

Drawing and art were lessons  that endured

and is much of our evidence today.

Music played a big part . 

The people of Hay rounded up musical instruments. 

Today for us this is a reminder that coping 

and surviving is about intellectual engagement 

with place almost as much as it is about physical needs.

Art has long been an outlet to communicate when seeking to understand and give voice to what is not easily put into words. It reminds us that forced displacement is both a historic and a contemporary story, whether the result of war genocide, natural disaster, colonisation, whether on racial, ethic, political or religious grounds or increasingly because of climate change. 

 

Then you hold life like a face . . . A poem for us today. Thank you Ellen Bass

colleen Poetry

The Thing Is

to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you down like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.
––Ellen Bass

Innocence, a poem by Colleen Keating In memory of a drowning tragedy at The Entrance

colleen Poetry , , ,

 

Innocence

(i.m.. of Laith age 11)

The days slip quietly by. We are hoping 
to forget – those of us who can. The family 
have had signs put up on significant posts 
thanking everybody for their help, support
and care over the days and nights of searching,
praying and waiting and grief has closed their doors
and lives with its heavy chains.

The channel from the lake flows like an ancient
witness, its mouth wide and unaware that 
its innocent chant like a child’s choir 
has taken innocence.

Pines and banksia form a wild weave 
against a sobering sky. A heron, called the guardian
of the edge, feeds as it does every dawn. 
Light today plays gently on the edge of the rocks,
licks into the sand,  ebbing and flowing. 
A few gulls stand pondering. Pelicans skate along
their reflection with abandonment. 

The sunflowers tied on the fence remind us 
what love was taken. A child’s colourful wind–mill 
plays on the sea breeze, candles and soft toys
soften the chained fence above the dunes
flowers with bewildered messages wilt in the sun 
and sorrow cries to us here. We want to forget, 
pretend the sea is our joy and happy place 
but like an arrow piecing one mothers heart 
we are reminded how it gives and  takes
and in its innocence takes the innocent.

Colleen Keating

 

(Laith Alaid had been visiting The Entrance at the mouth of Tuggerah Lake on a fishing trip with his family from Sydney when he was taken by a strong current that was described by a local life saver as one an “Olympic swimmer couldn’t swim against”.6 Nov 2024)