Patrick Dennis

Joy is a way of looking at
you & me & this & that,
and all things that may
oh - heaven knows - cause us grief
...

Down from the trees, a Kookaburra,
tempted by the throwdown of meat, descends,
hops, chuckles and gobbles; and bounces back.
...

My memories are yesterday in the fern place
under the great convent house at Clermont,
going out for the last time from the lash
and curse of nuns. Unrehearsed, you come to me
...

'And there were in the same country shepherds watching and keeping the night watch over their flock.' (Luke 2: 8

On the icy dark, the ghostly shape of shepherds:
and the sheep like clumps of rock on the sea's shore
...

Did I ask for this? I who, before we met,
scratched the surface and sowed the weeds of my time.
What charms, what magic, what enchantment did you have?
You with the tang of fruit - sweet-half-ripe -
...

I feel but cannot hear the downward beat
of the owl's wings which seem to move
like a poem on feathered air.
...

I have seen snowcapped mountains and pristine fields
adorned with the blush and hues of Heaven;
but I live here on this arid plain
stretched four ways to infinity.
...

Fire purges in His fierce ecstasy all things of sap and clay
and takes to Himself - oh! - the refined and raptured brides of Fire.

Charcoal, well dried, longs for the Fire
...

Poems should clang
and pull against
like the tongues of church bells
out of synch with their housing.
...

Let me rush on to where
I stammer out the next failed thought
that dumbsdown my mind in the heat of composing.
...

A beautifully cut gem held up to the eye
and rotated through the light
radiates perfection to me at every turn
as though each dazzling refraction were an infinity
...

...

...

I see a woman walking in the blue mist
that hangs like a frail mantle across the valley in the winter dawn.
Though she beckons me near, I dare not
for fear her beauty will annihilate my blackened nothing soul.
...

Skin and bone - the epitome of beauty -
display all that is loveable to the flat-on
roving mechanism of my dimensional eye.
...

My soul floats low and stricken
in search of a bonding Word with you.

I would chant that word if I could, and with that chant
...

'In the beginning was the Word': John 1: 1

Poetry is the language of the right word in the right place;
nor more nor less. Poetry is harmony of sounds
...

Here am I in my eighty-ninth year - said the sage -
and now my writings, though much praised in great councils,
are as straw to me. I look at them and think
Are these works mine? Is this the labour of my years?
...

On the Drummond west slopes a boy of six
may not know the use and cause of creeks;
and think them just old earth scars
useful to string waterholes for stock.
...

We are pilgrims, you and I.
Hand in hand, baggage burdened
we tread a dusty track which
though south twisting here and there
...