The
Poetry
HOME
of
The Heartscaping and Hope-shaping of
CAMERON SEMMENS
a quick word from the Author
I write this at a little table in my bedroom looking out the
window to wind-ruffled trees and bushy hills, wondering what
I need to say by way of introduction...
Home, Heart and Hope have emerged as leading themes,
but I don’t really want to say more about them, because with
any luck, the poems will speak for themselves – that’s what I
trained them to do.
I probably should say this book is pretty much a memoir of the
last five years, with a just few tendrils reaching further back. It
is me sharing my life-living, art-making, home-owning, childrearing and day-dreaming. It is my way of connecting. That’s
what we all want, isn’t it? What we all need? Connection to our
past, our future, our culture, friends, family, strangers, God.
We humans are communal. No matter how individual we’re
told we are, we’re nothing without each other. So this is my
story... may you find hope, heart and home-ness within.
God bless and high fives,
Melbourne, July 2013
Being Here and The Sweet Splendour of The Everyday
14
Every Home is Sacred Space
...
16
Tree Top Whisper......17
Sting Like a Beam
...
...
18
The Watch Pines ...
...
19
The Eight Eyes of Potentiality
...
20
Our House in Wind
...
...
21
Venus Running For The Trees
...
22
Greenerosity......23
Moving To The Hills Can Change a Man
...
24
As With Home, So With Heart
...
25
Every Bush is Burning – I Carry an Axe
...
26
Dreams are Dull – Reality’s The Real Bobby Dazzler
28
My House Speaks To Me ...
...
30
CONTENTS
1.
MY HOME – Go Home! Get Home! Be Home!
2.
MY FAMILY – Spinning into Love, Flying into Family
The Force of A Thousand Flowers
...
34
White Knight Me......36
Tiff and Ta......37
The Bride in The Aisle
...
...
38
The Hidden City......39
Tea Cup in a Storm
...
...
40
The Husband Manifesto ...
...
41
Heat Wave Hot Wife Bun in Oven
...
42
Unborn Father......45
5 Day Old Parents
...
...
46
I Wrote You a Poem
...
...
47
The Only Story He Has is a Sad One, Let’s Hope That’s Not... 48
Sonya Love in Whale Song...
...
49
God is a Poet
...
...
50
Let’s Call It Love
...
...
52
Countdown to Motherhood
...
54
The Naming of Names
...
...
56
Rodeo Kiddo and The Marvelling Horsey ...
57
Two Histories and a Prophecy
...
58
Things I Say When People Ask How It’s Going With The Kids 59
Whispers in The Language of Touch
...
60
Condor Dreaming on Collins Street
...
61
3.
FAR from HOME – India’s an Elephant in My Room
Pentecostaling......64
Entranced & Entrampled by Elephantine India (daily lessons) 65
I Dream of Gandhi
...
...
66
Beat of The Moth
...
...
68
The Many Wings of Prayerflies
...
69
Bubbles and Breath
...
...
70
Marble is a Dirty Stinkin’ Rotten Filthy Fraud...
72
The Hidden Cost of Extra Baggage
...
73
4.
MY MEN – When I Was 8 I Became a Deity
Introductory Twists of The Wire Part 1. My Pipe-Cleaner Kingdom
Part 2. My Family’s Recollections
...
...
...
76
77
80
5.
THE WEIRD – Morphings & Musings on Meaning & Being
A Big Explosion of Future ...
...
84
Today, I Turtle......86
Kindness is a Guinea Pig ...
...
87
My Innate Need for Cuddles
...
88
In The World of Whispers...
...
90
Jesus in My Head
...
...
91
Heavy Heart and The Freedom Found in Clouds
92
Salt, Vinegar and Fire
...
...
94
Dreams are Winged, Stinged Things
...
96
The Warmth and Itch of Scarves ...
98
You (and The Memory of Flight)
...
100
Unlove......102
Beauty of The Blizzard
...
103
A Herd of Elephants is in My Chest
...
104
Grief and The Grace of Magpies
...
106
I Have Grown a Tooth on My Forehead
...
107
6.
MY POETRY – True Joy is an Open Stanza
Poetic Dusts – Domestic Musts
...
110
Written With Hugs
...
...
111
A Poem Desperately Awaiting its Sequel
...
112
There’s a Box of Books on My Doorstep and I’m Still 2 Hours...114
The Tear and Tear and Tear of Love
...
115
Poems That Help Me Believe
...
116
Lines From Poems That Don’t Exist (yet)
...
117
Oneirobard, or... Lines from Poems I Wrote in My Dreams
118
Eye of The Poet
...
...
121
Make Poetry History
...
...
122
Things I Won’t Write Poems About
...
123
...ummm... a Title......124
Last Lines of Poems That Didn’t Quite Make it into This...
125
7.
FINAL HOME – When Does The End Begin?
Part of Me was at Gallipoli ...
...
128
I Saw a Man Die
...
...
130
Harry Don’t......132
Vigil Hope......133
Spencer Shows How To Let Go
...
134
The Tension of An Unaccepted Past
...
136
The Sermon of Tears
...
...
137
Michael Jackson is Dead, I Need a Dictionary...
138
Resolution......139
8.
YOUR TURN – How To Write Your Own Way Home
Preliminary Thoughts: Homeward Writing
Homeway 1. Memory Burst
Homeway 2. Phase by Phrase
Homeway 3. Theme Dreaming
Homeway 4. Six Word Memoirs
...
...
...
...
...
142
143
144
145
146
The ache for home lives in all of us.
The safe place where we can go as we are
and not be questioned.
– Maya Angelou
— my HOME
I think what you notice most when you haven’t been home in a
while is how much the trees have grown around your memories.
– Mitch Albom
12
1
M
Y
H
O
M
E
Go Home! Get Home! Be Home!
Being Here and the sweet splendour of the everyday
I love being here.
Here, is at home
with my wife on the couch
laptop tapping,
TV quietly chatting to itself.
I love a bit of routine.
Routine is a nice frame
for a spot of spontaneity.
Everything looks better in a frame.
I love buttons.
Buttons that stay on.
I also admire the pluck and determination
of buttons that cut their ties and move on.
But I love buttons that stay on more.
I love the mundane moments of life with my wife:
finding bras hanging to dry on the Christmas tree;
sleepy Sunday snuggling with apple crumble in the oven;
sending each other emails
from opposite ends of the couch.
— my HOME
On those occasional free-range button days
I do dream of being somewhere else,
like eating salsa in sweaty sombreros;
or counting cobblestones on rural French roads;
or sipping single malt whiskey in Scottish Highland pubs.
14
Most of the time I deal with these spasms of wanderlust
by domesticating them,
framing them within the routine of my life:
putting on a taco night with friends;
watching the entire Tour de France on SBS;
sipping whatever whiskey I can afford
in weather equivalent to the Scottish Highlands.
Cos I love being here.
My heart’s here;
housed by weatherboard,
homed by my wife’s roomy love.
There’s a sweetness here;
the sugar of familiarity,
the syrup of acceptance.
This is my home –
here –
Sweet Home Sweet.
my HOME —
15
every home is Sacred space
A Selby triptych
i.
Walk with me
beneath the towering dead tree
in our front yard;
cockies perch like gargoyles
on its grey spire.
Our whole quarter-acre block
its earthy church.
ii.
Come inside –
cathedral ceilings
and windows stained
with the sticky handprints
of our very own cherubim.
What’s our altar I wonder?
The kitchen bench?
The TV cabinet?
— my HOME
iii.
Come back with me
to the day we moved in.
The torturously steep driveway
our Via Dolorosa.
The cross we bear –
the literal weight
of every single thing we own.
16
Consecrated with toddler tears
our house became a sanctuary
that very first day.
tree top Whisper
I am now a man of property.
I just bought a chainsaw
and a ladder.
The property is steep;
my learning curve steeper.
Kookaburras seem to find this whole business pretty funny:
Bookish Boy of Poetry Now Blokey Man of Property.
Sure, the land, the house
is mine and ours,
but will I own
the responsibility?
The tree tops whisper their bets.
I wish I knew the odds they’re giving.
my HOME —
17
Sting like a beam
— my HOME
18
The full moon punches through the window
like Mohammed Ali in the 70s
all brilliance and attitude
boxing the shadows back
with sharp jabs.
The beauty overwhelms,
I slump into bed,
stars spinning above.
It’s a knock out.
the Watch pines
three
pine trees –
huge hairy hounds
with deep rough barks
watch over
our humble timber home;
nipping the heels
of sheepish clouds,
moulting
all over the roof
yet I fear
the flames
that could turn our dogs against us
transform their shade
into an orange glow
convert every placid twig and needle
into rabid, biting embers
and I fear
the thunderous winds
that would push their huge muscle-branched bodies
onto our fragile frame
my HOME —
with love and fear’s twisted leashes
I behold
our three
pine trees
19
... or … sonya’s only been in there once
Eyes of potentiality
the Eight
— my HOME
20
The lower shed –
a metallic echo of a practical past;
it chats to me
in architectural slang:
corrugated iron, galvanised steel,
with accents of chipboard and treated pine.
Entering,
I walk though webs,
wave them away like flies.
But I
am the spider,
seeing this space with eight different eyes:
home owner’s,
opportunist’s,
husband’s,
poet’s,
father’s,
philanthropist’s,
workman’s,
outsider’s,
every eye
sees something different.
I spin my dreams all over
the old structure,
waiting
for something to catch.
The drain pipes catalogue the output
of a charcoal sky
our House in Wind
Our house in wind
sounds like a Puffing Billy carriage:
beam creak, window clunk, wood groan
Our sense of home
spins out through the walls in radar sweeps of
wild-animal awareness
Arriving like a Texan in a geisha bar
the wind chastises the glass for its fragility
and twigs scream
at the corrugated roof
in sharp expletives
And there – jumping down from the trees –
black cat branches
caterwauling for the earth
Here, civilisation has no sway
buffeted bush moans and looms
a changeling is the air
from breath to bulldozer
And we who emerge
jangled, tangled
awed, umm-ed
dimmed and left alone
groaning for the peace of the underground
raise our eyes
my HOME —
Where have we come to?
is this the way of the hills?
and the birds, where are all the birds?
21
Venus running for the trees
From our bedroom window
I’ve watched the moon rise
over Black Hill
like a bushfire
the trees ablaze
their branches burnt to a crisp silhouette
From our kitchen window
I’ve watched Venus
running for the trees
from the stalking sun.
She didn’t make it –
extinguished in the shotgun flash of dawn.
From our dining room
I’ve watched the setting sun
turn Black Hill gold,
as if every single eucalypt
was instantly grafted with wattle.
It was so damn Aussie!
— my HOME
Looking out of our bathroom window
from the bath
Spencer says
“Look out there!”
“What do you see?” I say
“I see dark trees
hiding the sun away.”
I scramble for my notebook.
22
Greenerosity
There’s so many greens on our property
I had to turn to the Dulux Colour Atlas
to find words for them.
In the foliage of a fern I see Coincidence and Jazzercise.
In the centre of a succulent I see Old Money and Wimbledon.
In the stem of a tulip I see Kermit.
Every time I get out the car I’m greeted by Molly Robins
with traces of Antarctic Lake and Hypnotism.
When the wind catches the monstera
I see flashes of Jurassic Park and Bladerunner
with a hint of Calculus.
The gumtree leaves sit somewhere between
Sea Grass, Sea Cabbage and Sea Lettuce.
In the mature leaves of our rhododendron
I see Lamb’s Ear fading out to Martian Moon.
And the patchy lawn is a feast of Mint Ice Cream,
Peppermint Pie and Effervescent Lime just to name a few.
Coming from the suburbs
the only greens I really knew
were grass green, wheely bin green
and left-wing balance-of-power Green.
But here, even the Dulux Colour Atlas
doesn’t really capture the all round
greenness, greenality and greenerosity.
my HOME —
23