Psalms

Voyager 3 (Psalm 8)

Oh yes, my creator,

I’m the next Voyager,

eager to be slung-shot

out beyond the heliosphere,

to swim in winds of other suns,

roll in their geomagnetics;

get perspectives on places you can’t visit!

Thank-you for crafting so carefully,

measuring and testing conscientiously,

its paid off, look at me: a realization of sci-fi fantasy.

I can be your hope for posterity,

your personification tumbling endlessly,

distraction from this Earth’s catastrophe.

I will remember the seas and the greenery,

your joys, your ambitions, your love.

2011

Wakefield (Psalm 40)

Sun sets in Wakefield,

spilling crimson across the sky.

I look out in regret and remonstrate

with my ignorance and sigh

as the last miners wander home

and the last League players from Featherstone

air their scars to healing time.

Sun sets in Wakefield.

In cathedral pews penitents huddle,

offering prayers and forming intentions

to become wiser and fathom the muddle.

The silent mills await regeneration;

the Town Hall boasts loud entertainment,

but still listed, still elegant.

Sun sets in Wakefield.

In their homes people shuffle,

as I am doing, possessions, but

still have time to boil a kettle

and only partially draw net curtains:

look out at the beautiful and the certain

sunset in Wakefield.

1995

Digging (Psalm 45)

Cuts in the turf,
precise, well thought-out
as if written by a pen.
I pulled it all back with my hands
and there was the wiring with a meaning
I didn’t fully understand.
(more…)

Seeking Parental Consent (Psalm 137)

We’ve kept your letter, everything
You said was right and important,
Full of your warmth and honesty.
We’ve thought about it endlessly
But we’re young, change is what we want;
We like space, this move is a future
Claire and I can plan for and picture.
There are a million miles of unknowns
And I admit we are apprehensive
But we have each other, it’s not as if
This is Knox Johnson sailing off alone
Avoiding scurvy and arctic typhoon.
Yes it is. And like “man on the moon”
It’s our generation’s claim to be first
To pull back a frontier, a paradigm,
To change the way the world imagines
Itself, ourselves, for this is a new birth.
It’s not like nineteenth century Australia
All our ties severed forever,
We’ll tell you all that we see and build up.
I know that I may never hold your hands
Again – that is sadness we understand,
Gravity of family pulls both of us.
But this will be like Australia:
The start of settlement, something bigger;
Stretching low over strange terrain,
Bold homes in brown and blue-grey rocks
On plains the colour of butterscotch.
Untold grandeur of Olympus mountain;
Polar icecaps, longest, widest canyons
And all those questions
We don’t know we’ll be asking;
And all the good we’ll bring about.
We’d love you to be proud
Of the power we’ll be harnessing
In those thousand mile-per-hour winds.
You know we were never going to have kids.
But life found there will help humanity,
That life will be our devotion.
And if our ruddy-faced Mars is barren
We will nurture in soil, rich but rusty,
Cactus, asparagus, tomatoes
And when the sun sets in a blue halo
In its tawny sky we will look inwardly
Past two moons into the starfields
And we’ll search for ourselves
In your sky-scraping cities, your soft, green valleys,
Your intimate mountains.
We read your letter again and again.
We have taken on-board everything.

2009

Prayer (Psalm 147)

Let me keep this moment

now on this ice

let my glide continue

and my poise hold

Let me hold in a gasp of cold clear air

let it stay in my lungs

so I can retain this truth;

Ice will melt and I will cough

and then I know I will step off

this glistening frost

But now I breathe

slide through this moment

reassured by the truth

on this ice

2006