Locked Down in Melbourne

Locked Down in Melbourne

(by Ellen Carr, 21 July 2020)

Are you masking?
Just asking .. .!
Are you multi-tasking?

Home schooling,
kids stalling?
Really gruelling?

Are you home-working,
not shirking?
So disconcerting!

Are you home alone,
with just the phone,
in lock-down zone?

Are you doing it tough,
and you’ve had enough?
Finding it rough?

Are you doing your finest
to bypass the virus,
the pandemic crisis?

Well, hats off to you!
You’re going to get through!
We’re praying for you.

Take some time out,
Do a mini workout,
Let the kids shout.

Make a hot cuppa,
a great cheerer-upper.
Ignore all the clutter.

Do a little dance.
Jump, twirl and prance,
in those old tracky pants.

Put all your cares,
this state of affairs,
at the foot of the stairs.

Let God do the lifting,
the moving and shifting,
his strength enlisting.

Give him your worries,
your messes and hurries.
It’s those that he carries.

Let him walk with you,
guiding you through,
as he wants to.

But keep on with the masking,
And don’t give up laughing
For this time is but passing.

Uninvited Guests

Table set, places to sit.
Guests arrive, barbie lit.
Then the wasps swing by,
uninvited.

A flurry for covers, cans of spray,
furtive eating, looking each way,
for the wasps are here,
despite it.

Yet there’s water to drink, food to eat,
more than enough. We are replete,
though the wasps hang round,
delighted.

Praise for our table, cleared of its scraps.
Thanks for our friends, as we now relax,
now the buzzing wasps
are quieted.

© Copyright Ellen Carr 2015

Cool change

 

 

The city lets out a sigh

 

as rain pours down.

 

Its steamy cover melts

 

with fleeing frown.

 

Greenery lightens its hue

 

to stretch and grow,

 

laughing away the dust,

 

changing the status quo.

 

 

A southerly breeze dispels

 

the blanketing heat.

 

Release extends to splay

 

it’s tendrils sweet.

 

Seeping into bonded soul

 

and body sour,

 

it spills its liquor bowl

 

of healing power.

 

 

Cool descends to cloak

 

the brooding streets.

 

Frozen humans now,

 

un-paused, resume their beats.

 

Hail declares the peace

 

with drumbeat wild,

 

Fiercest heat, disarmed,

 

replaced by mild.

 

 

The city sighs again,

 

accepting change,

 

geographic fate

 

its weather range.

 

Lightened legs and lungs

 

increase their pace.

 

Beauty whispers round

 

its rain-washed face.

 

 

© Ellen Carr 2013

 

 

The giant is felled

The giant of our backyard is felled.

For twenty years or more she stood

white limbed

elegant,

watching over our neigbourhood,

calling birds to perch awhile,

to sing their songs

on high.

What tales she might have told.

Perhaps she did,

in waving whispers.

 

She saw our baby girls into womanhood,

from swings to sandpits,

to salaries,

watched the house next door

reduced to dusty rubble

for the three in its place,

looked down on guinea pigs and dog,

our barbecues,

our digging and our planting,

our rest and our play.

 

Through storms she stood,

through drought.

She hung on in white resplendence

as her sweet leaves vanished.

Marauders of the night devoured her,

stripped her bare

to gleaming bones.

She stood, a gracious skeleton

of death,

clinging to a ghostly life.

 

So not to eke a stark existence out,

her final days she shed

to warming hearths

and nourishing soil.

She bowed out gracefully

and vanished like the ghost she was,

to memory

of lemon-scented leaves

and towering tree.

 

© Ellen Carr 2014

Written when our beautiful lemon-scented gum tree (eucalyptus tree) had to be cut down due to the effect of our drought years, a few years back, and the destructive work of possums, eating its leaves. I miss its tall beauty and the many rainbow lorikeets (little parrots) that used to sit in it and squawk loudly.