Here are images and thoughts from an expedition to Fraser Island with a group of friends.

A thank you sonnet
Robin Ford, May 2019

They drive in tandem, right along the beach;
(They’d driven cars in convoy through the years),
When choosing inland tracks they quickly reach
A common mind; and then a plan appears.
They couldn’t stop the tracks from being rough,
Or vehicles that came the other way -
Reversing they both found easy enough,
(They didn’t bat an eyelid, as they say.)
Of course, they needed food to keep them strong.
(And passengers need food to stay awake)
For morning tea they brought fresh cake along,
For afternoon refreshments – yet more cake.
We all enjoyed ourselves, and we’d been thriving;
So, thank you for the plans, the food, the driving. 

One of our party said they would like some poems – but only if they were short!

Haiku 1

Toyota dances
On patchwork shadows; autumn
Holidays fading    

Haiku 2

 Breakers and sand hills
 Define beach highway; tide change
 Each day twice graded  

Here’s a bit of doggeral. We were playing around with words and started to talk about ‘noodles’. I wondered if there was a suitable rhyming word. This is what I came up with:

Doggeral

There was a young man with poodle
Who taught it to swim with a noodle
It had water-wings too
And two flippers, that's true
With a mask, the whole kit and caboodle

Hierarchy

Robin Ford, May 2019

“I see some primates swimming there.”
 I looked where he directed,
 But all I saw were humans
 Which was true - but not expected.
 But only homo sapiens,
 Of primates still alive,
 Can make a swimming costume, 
 Or Toyota four-wheel drive 

Impermanence

In our last after-dinner discussion we explored impermanence. Below I have included two of the poems I have written on the topic. You can see other poems in the “Impermanence” collection by viewing or downloading a pdf via this link.

Impermanence – Gutters

August 2016

 The iron-makers fill a firey tower  
 With limestone, ore and coke — all won by mining.
 They keep it running, hour after hour,
 Then draw the iron off for more refining.
 The new-born metal gets a brief repeal
 But soon it feels the purifiers’ fire
 Where it in time becomes low carbon steel — 
 So commonplace, yet something to admire.
 It’s rolled until it’s thin enough, then sent
 To where our gutters see the light of day
 And painted, in an effort to prevent
 Corrosion, but it surely will decay.
 It’s ash to ashes, iron ore to rust;
 Formed and reformed from interstellar dust.

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Impermanence – Eternity

When daylight strikes the land, by rearranging
 Just water, air and soil it makes a flower.
 Each detail’s perfect, yet it’s ever changing —
 Disorder is restrained by solar power.
 A wilderness; a concept outside time.
 In constant flux, yet something stays the same.
 So maybe without reason, without rhyme, 
 I’m part of some grand project I can’t name.
 We make a garden — wilderness that’s guided —
 To suit a project that we have in mind.
 It's trained to follow lines that we decided:
 Control is at the core of human kind.
 Now, gardens might seem under our control.
 Yet strands of wild-ness last, and lift my soul.
   

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