Frost on the Leaves

The valley crackles

Ice under foot

White sheets over limbs

We sit awed

Didn't see it coming

A frost like this

There will be foxes

Testing our succulent hens

Keeps the other half busy

Washing and warming stuff

Better that way

No need to talk

She will look out of windows

I will retire to the shed

Both looking to a life frozen

No winter thaw our bed

© shaun patrick green 2013

Kings Canyon.

We scaled Kings Canyon at dawn

Following European tourists in thongs

Saw ripple marks set in stone

Traces of the Devonian Ocean

Thrust up through continental drift

To form rocky outcrops

For photo opportunities

Before our first anniversary

You lay in a bed fouled by tubes

One breast less than my wife

As if life had turned into a shark

And taken a chunk out of your chest

Another scar on the earth

Revealing its violent struggle to be

© shaun patrick green 2013

Turning Back The Boats (or The Tyranny Of Distance Is That We Are Never Far Enough Away From Stupid Ideas).

Invasions break like waves on history's beach

Inspired by greed or misplaced good intentions

Bringing with them God, alcohol and syphilis

New forms of war, old social conventions

Australia was Terra Incognita until Europe

Flung its unwanted shit against these shores

Only after white men landed in tricorn hats

Did it become Terra Nullius under foreign laws

If only the Enlightenment experiment

Had extended to criminalising hypocrisy

Then politicians would have been transported

To the colonies - an act of true democracy

And if only the indigenous peoples of this land

Spoke Latin and possessed a vast navy

Then the First Fleet would have been turned around

And Indonesia would be eating roast beef with gravy

© shaun patrick green 2013