Wednesday 15 August 2012

I breakfast with the magpies

I wrote this poem for Debbie Paton's first solo art exhibition, which featured a number of magpie studies. The School of Music Poets teamed up with the Cafe Poets at Joey's Watson and wrote half a dozen poems on magpies for Debbie.  They are now being published in an illustrated pamphlet thanks to Hal Judge, ACT coordinator of Australian Poetry.

I breakfast with the magpies
whenever I am able
sunlight spreads a cloth
on my little table

a solitary musician
smart in dinner suit
swift-swoops to my veranda
warbling like a flute

one snack is not enough
but gobbled just in time -
between some grateful yodels -
before a whirr and whine

of eager wind through feathers
as others come to land -
expectantly aware
that I'm at their command

heads up - chests out - they're busking -
pouring rhapsodies
in trickling notes of ivory
from throats of ebony -

no careless silver needed
thrown in a violin case -
they take tips from the air -
or hand - or any place -

now you have caught those magpies
with paints and brush of sable -
the sunlight and the shadows
that hop upon my table


© Hazel Hall
27 July 2012


The Steiner Lyre

I read this poem on the ABC on 14 August 2012.   Eliza Hull (Australian Poetry) and I were interviewed in a program on Cafe Poets in Residence.

she's playing
the Steiner lyre
to this child
who cannot yet talk
but understands

he fixes
his small black eyes
on her face-
flays his dimpled legs
and tiny hands

the music's
pitched at 442
appropriate
for little ones
so the experts say

tuning note
for celestial songs -
she tells us -
music of the spheres -
a smidgeon past A

words skeptics
might discredit
or jeer at -
but she speaks with grace
and childlike belief -

inspired by
ancient parables -
she looks for
forgotten lessons
that might hide beneath

do we sense
the scent of petals -
cherry blooms
as soft as the skin
on his fingertips

can we see
a young musician
years ahead
catching songs that drift
from his father's lips

at the end
she packs up the lyre -
formally
farewells us - stepping
back and bowing low

leaving us
in echoes of song -
wondering
what the secret is
she and the baby know


© Hazel Hall
7 May 2012