poetrytownsville

SISTER KENNY

Sister Elizabeth Kenny,

Sailor,

You earned your title on the Dark Ships of World War One.

Later to prove your seaworthiness,

You walked upon the waters of Lake Complacency,

Townsville.

Around you ran the children you had saved,

Singing:

‘Little children should be free,

Free to run

and to play in the sun.

God knows these things

Were meant to be.’

“Charlatan!’

Cried the doctors.

‘Shame!’

Cried the nurses.

The butcher’s block doesn’t

wield the chopper.

The apprentice doesn’t teach the master

and the nurse doesn’t lecture the doctor!’

GO back to the bush,

Upstart Kenny.

Next day the papers carried the headline:

“Sister Kenny can’t swim.”

But you persisted,

Speaking to deaf ears,

Battering on the shutters of closed minds.

In England,

curing a doctor’s child

of the polio torture before his eyes.

But he wouldn’t bear witness

To your skill.

Finally in the land of stars and stripes

One doctor listened.

Perhaps it was true,

Polio could be stopped without surgeon’s knife

or splint and steel

to shackle little bodies.

Perhaps, just perhaps.

The cure was taught,

Tried on one,

Then ten,

A hundred.

Soon thousands sang,

‘Little children should be free,

Free to run

and to play in the sun.

We always knew these things

are meant to be.’

Footnote:

 In WW1 sister Kenny was a nurse on the hospital ships which sailed without lights, because of enemy subs.

She was able to travel the world trying to have her treatment accepted because she’d invented a stretcher called the Silvia Stretcher.

Money from the patent on this allowed her to persist in her quest to have her treatment recognized.

Harry,                                                                                                                                     220721

It was raining hard in Frisco’

You needed one more fare to make your night.

But what about that other knight,

blasting through the dark of space?

What would you say to him?

‘Feed my lambs, feed my sheep?’

Harry,

You tried for a loaves and fishes,

to feed the whole world

off a 33 and a third vinyl disc.

What would you say to Jeff,

his Amazing river of gold?

You can’t eat gold or a space craft??

What would you say to them with their Babylon Tower,

rocket ships reaching for heaven?

While empty bellies watch the void filled with stars

and wonder if Babylon will fall.

What would the pure and simple truth be?

But,

‘The truth is rarely pure and never simple.’

Harry Chapin, singer and songwriter, had the desire to end world hunger.

He pestered other stars to perform free and raise money for this cause.

2021 marks 40 years since Harry Chapin’s death.

WOODSTOCK GENERATION

Woodstock Generation where are you now?

Three days of peace and love,

An ‘Aquarian Exposition.’

A war to stop,

dirty rivers to clean,

an older generation to straighten out.

Wasn’t three days of peace

and love

supposed to be.

three weeks,

three years,

thirty times three decades?

Woodstock Generation you saw,

unborn in mind’s eye,

a world of peace,

each looking out for the other.

Sharing,

caring.

Clean water,

clear air.

Woodstock Generation where did you lose the plot?

70’s, 80’s, 90’s?

Kids to raise,

paying for

‘A little box all made out of ticky-tacky.’

Woodstock Generation,

what the hell happened?

You have become the people

you warned your children about!

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When did your vision get foggy?

It was so clear,

‘Mystic crystal revelation.’

Did you sell out

or

were you bought out?

Your grandkids are cryin,’

talkin’ ‘bout tryin’ you

as environment vandals

for burnin’ the planet

like a sausage left too long on the barbie.

What happened Woodstock Generation?

You touched the moon,

now touch the earth,

touch hearts,  

stop the tears.

You talked the talk,

now walk the walk.

Woodstock Generation,

stub out your joints,

get off your bean bags.

Crank up your old L P’s,

show us Aquarius,

‘The minds true liberation’

Woodstock Generation,

show us,

old hippies never die.

\

Then tell me please,

Woodstock Generation,

where are we Now?

Plywood is the essence of the tree,

the layers peeled back,

the grain exposed.

Like us when we bare our soul,

confess all,

say:

‘I am human but of the gods.

If I could only peel back this human bark,

expose the grain,

as beautiful as a Monet

or Van Gough,’

where is the means to peel away flesh and blood?

Is it sunset or rise?

Or the cry of your first born?

a symphony to our ears.

But are they really bellowing,

‘Who put this weight of flesh and blood on me?’

I am of the gods,

I fly,

know all,

see all

when I am not of this mass.

The questions that come with the flesh

are for the gods to answer.

This jumper with broken zip,

 I can mend it,

we did as kids.

You had to,

 jumpers didn’t grow on trees.

Not in those days,

of mend and make do.

Even shoes,

You’d glue new heels on.

Grandad would cut the old worn bit,

make it even.

Then glue on the new rubber heel

from a kit that included glue and all the bits.

Even the sole,

You could stick on a new one.

That’s what we need today,

glue on a new soul,

rubber or otherwise.

Summon me now

to wait at your window.

Moonbeams announce presence(impatience).

Summon me now.

I wait idle to hear

The aroma of fresh baked moon light.

It is almost gone now but shadows still linger.

A thousand moons try to erase

 but to no end.

Almost but not quite gone,

that which began with time takes its own good

to dissolve.

Would prayer help?

Implore,

gods

saints

demi gods,

 would that?

Almost gone,

almost gone,

almost,

gone?

Hold a Moonbeam 01/09/10

I hear the trains rattle by
miles from here.
But the night
is still,
(except for a million crickets).

So quiet the night
it carries the sound
those miles.

So quiet the night,
the passing comes and goes.
Past a point,
fixed but moving,
fading into dark.

So dark the point
disappearing,
all reference vanishing,
fading,
fading
to a point,
to make a point.

060420
Woodstock Generation
for years I wept for you as lost,
like so many who never retuned
from the war you fought to end.
Like the four who fell in Ohio.

Woodstock Generation,
Now, I cry tears of joy for you,
you are found.
Your spirit alive in your childrens’ children,
‘cuffed and beaten
for the crime of believing,
‘All are equal.’

Woodstock Generation twice removed,
All over the planet you kneel
on one knee,
(kneel as one)
that others may rise.

Woodstock Generation adrift for too long,
Your safe harbour is the storm.