Tipping points

1.
tuesday morning
sunbird sang spring –

and we
still deep bundled
in winter sleep stumbled
out the house
half-remembering
his song.

2.
on my desk between potted plants
and two birdhouses storm-downed
and in for repair – amidst pencils
and paintbrush and candle and river stones –
six ants are carrying off the wing
of a larger, now clearly flightless, insect –

i sip of my water
replace the glass to the side
for a better view
of their lumbering task.

i’ve moved wardrobes and fridges
and cumbersome dressers up
and down stairs – even moved the piano
once or twice – i know the idle banter,
the careful negotiation,
the counting-in the lift
that it takes to work together –

and at what point do i suspend belief
in our own pinnacle of sentience
and know that these ants
have just made another god-awful
joke about the theory of flight
and told each other to mind their toes
while manoeuvring a path across the desk.

by the time these words are written
the ants and severed wing have disappeared
over the edge of my desk as ants do –
muttering and grunting as they went.

3.
first week of august
and freesia bud pushes
petal and petal
to the wind

a deep scented
morning cold breath

a promise of the year
that turns.

4.
yesterday, a welcome respite
from weeks of cold and rain,
was a good day to trim some goats –
the mid-season faces and tails
and feet trims, guaranteed to have us
smelling like a goat by noon –

these are the constansts,
the unchanging of here
first freesias in august cold,
taaibos caterpillars path strewn
gathering winter mud for their cocoons,
narina trogon flitting bare-branched
around the quiet garden,
warm fires, dark mornings
goats.

but up the road a tide is pushing
a landscape changing irrevocably
in human time –

the first fence enclosed a dam,
a spring, a watersource for the living –
then another fence and another
some trees came down
a subdivision or two
then more fence until a walk up the road
becomes a walk between fences 2m tall
with mowed grass verges.

two weeks ago
we found man and machine gathered
at the end of the road – measuring
and marking to pave the road
(well the first bit of it anyway)
it is to have curbstones and gutters
and all the trimmings of suburbia –

seems the big shiny cars
that live behind nice high fences
feel out of place in these dirt road
forest hills – seems they have chosen
to make a home here – wild life lovers
who want the birds but not the trees,
the bushbuck but not the forest.

they sing the song of digger and chainsaw
and brick until they are comfortable,
making it all pretty
and palatable
and nice.

5.
it all weighs
weight
stacks up against and on –
some mornings
six blankets under
it is hard to move – face it all
all the constants and changings
and inevitablities

and yet
just when we feel
there is no lower we can fall
we find ground beneath us – earth
we find ourselves on our knees,
hands cupped with soil
praying.
our mother
who art the only heaven we have ever known
give us this day.

6.
there is a
household insecticide
called doom –
(honest truth)

it is very popular –
old ladies(among many many others)
in cardigans and sensible shoes buy it,
put it in their shopping baskets
between their thrift pack of apples,
tin of apricot jam and an all purpose cleaner.

and oh the awful irony –
of spraying our homes
with doom and then
hoping we are not home
when the apocalypse comes to call –
when it crashes our shores,
or empties our shelves
or melts or burns or infects –
or does any number of things
an apocalypse does.

is that it
is that the tipping point?
the incredible human arrogance
that thinks we can spray our house
with doom
and live.

7.
in air bright with cold
the full moon rose
in a clear still sky

and the hills and the hills
and the hills
rejoiced.

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In response to Brendan at Desperate poets essay entitled tipped – read it here https://desperatepoets.com/2023/07/31/tipped/