Stacking Wood

Our Mum was chopping wood, a daunting pile.
She said, 'This must be stacked before you go'.
Affecting not to hear with practiced guile,
we pedalled off on bikes a mile or so-

to where the river mouth lay satin sleek.
Our wheels etched loops and spirals in the sand,
the palimpsest displayed our fine technique,
a tour de force of abstract art unplanned.

Back home, we slipped our bikes behind the shed
and Mum was busy gutting clean a chook.
We darted in and out to snatch a snack,
pretending not to see her pointed look.

Across the field, the web-laced stockyard fence
bequeathed its bones as splinters in our hands.
Our realms were spiked with riveting suspense
and bordered prickle-riddled no man's lands.

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poem by Diane Hine
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Birdbrain

Streaking, braking, twisting snatching,
Willie Wagtail's insect catching,
acrobatic chatterbox is garbed in black and white.
Overhead a falcon gliding
wheels and dives, hones in, colliding,
nail-gun force in outstretched claws which strike and lock in tight.
Falcon's talons raking feathers,
small-boned bird eludes caged tethers,
spirals down to dropp within a crown of needled pine.
Cradled safe in twiglet fences,
Wagtail blinks, regaining senses,
splintered wing hangs limply from a slashed and bloodied spine.
Wagtails are unused to resting,
soon, the broken bird is testing,
asymmetric fluttering as painful minutes slip.
Drifting, slowly dehydrating,
ants begin investigating;
as they nip, it hops, retreating, reaching pine limb's tip.
Still it watches insects flicking,
body clock's insistent ticking,

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poem by Diane Hine
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The Chameleon Crawl.

The baby, palms planted,
arms straight and stomach grounded,
moves with........not a crawl,
more of a mudskipper wriggle.

Next day, same stance,
gingerly brings both knees forward,
belly and pelvis now precariously hoisted
ten centimetres up;
the body plane tracing
a slight asymmetrical figure of eight
on four unsteady limbs,
like a table top with loose pinned legs.

Tiny hip and shoulder joints;
slippery as beginners on skates.
Tender muscles twitching.

Brain and nerves fully engaged;
sensory input, predictions, transmissions,

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poem by Diane Hine
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At sixes and sevens

Minds are avid part-time sleuths
half asleep with sensors set.
Whet by fret and tripped by threat,
laying bare conflicting truths.
Inside private polling-booths
clues are vetted, outcomes bet.

Living things which move need brains,
tuned response to changing world.
Evolution's path unfurled
specialized machine which trains.
Trial and error process strains
random information swirled.

Primed to spark at fresh events,
disregarding flat surround.
Honed for nature's battleground,
immanent expedience.
Guessing probable percents,
how an outlay may rebound.

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poem by Diane Hine
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Time-crossed Lovers

Rocket ships were crossing paths at near the speed of light;
solo voyagers, boy and girl, both escapees in flight.
Brushing past, each looked within the others inner space,
pensive faces noted shipboard clocks' unequal pace.

Seemed as if each others time ran slower than their own,
pressing home how destiny had cast them off alone.
Knowing how inertial frames are relatively cast,
yet it felt as if their lives were disappearing fast.

Destinations calculated, to the heavens hurled;
onboard navigation systems, led to chosen worlds.
Ah, but love had other plans and interfered with fate;
he prepared to turn his ship while she slowed down to wait.

Recklessly, he risked the hull to brake and alter course;
months it took, with heavy strain, deceleration's force.
Further months to trace her path and match her slackened speed,
driven by an overwhelming solitary need.

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poem by Diane Hine
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Trip

A spider's curving, shallow-funnelled hall
leads to space inside my car's wing mirror.
A gap between the glass and metal wall;
pupil in the web's inverted sclera.

Cemented bridging fibres reeled in tight,
nerved and netted radial extrusion
which dissipates in flimsy spiralled white;
tensile, sticky-droplet daubed diffusion.

Her unlit door reveals an arching limb,
poised to read the message in a tremor.
I drive. The wind speed flips from nil to grim.
Spider's lives are fraught with chance dilemma.

She nets a fly at forty miles per hour;
tearing force to leave a web in tatters.
She scrambles from the safety of her bower,
bouncing in the gale as remnants scatter.

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poem by Diane Hine
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The Carpenter Fish

The Sperm Whale's sucker-scarred head was fixed on slaughter
of dark-inked squid, twice hid in depths below.
Her blow hole flooded with draught of icy water
and froze the oil which kept her bulk afloat.

She sank, skin wrinkled, crushed in vice tight clenches,
her flexing ribs collapsed without a creak.
Her sonar click explored the abyssal trenches
and honed in on her prey with rising ‘creeeeek'.

Three quarter hour, she plundered the cold black larder,
to rise she flushed waxed oil with blood warm heat.
Her steady clicks discovered a creature harder
and massive, riding the surging ocean's sheet.

The stressed joints loudly creaked in the wood hulled whaler,
all night the rolling ocean gave no sleep.
The sore joints silent creaked in the seasoned sailor,
all night his hammock swung at angles steep.

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poem by Diane Hine
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Hanibal B.

It was round about the third century B.C.
In Carthage by the sea,
That General Hamilcar Barca's son grew up
By the name of Hanibal B.
And this boy lived with no other thought
Than elephant husbandry.

I was a calf and he was a child,
In Carthage by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was frowned upon by some
I and my Hanibal B.
With such love, that the elephant god Ganesh
Fancied him and me.

And this was the reason that in 218 B.C.
In Saguntum by the sea,
The double-dealing Romans played up, upsetting
My sensitive Hanibal B.
So that his relatives said,
‘For Baal's sake, let the elephants be!

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poem by Diane Hine
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Expectations

Our fabulous flying wheel galaxy
plows head-first through intergalactic space.
Seven thousand mile per minute taxi
bound for the Virgo Cluster's misty trace.

Our Sun bounces on gravity's tether,
speck in a collective starry flower.
Astrophysicists predict fair weather
ahead, half a million miles per hour.

A quarter of a billion year trip
carries Earth once around the Milky Way.
We plummet through the thick and thin of it;
gas pockets, dust clouds, Spiral arms' melee.

Our present course is relatively clear
and beyond the Oort Cloud's icy comets
the solar wind of our heliosphere
expands to shield the inner planets.

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poem by Diane Hine
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Satiety

Macaroons and frosted cupcakes blush
under the shining-eyed approval
of the child in the shirred sundress.
The breath of the waiting queue is hushed
by a tension-melting spectacle,
as she is swept off her tip-toes
by the debonair gingerbread men.

The relieved mother nods, smiling.
This should be the denouement:
The patisserie assistant slips
the treat into a white paper bag
and a prompt conclusion allows
bemused onlookers to share a brief
afterglow of benevolence.

Except that, the patisserie
assistant is dallying
and the child is spellbound by
a new wave of possibilities.

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poem by Diane Hine
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