during lockdown I made marmalade from windfall mandarins the tree is laden again how relentless this flight
It’s the first winter storm as I write, and this is playing in the background (album link) (something similar from YouTube). May Keith Jarrett and Charlie Haden ease your weather wherever you are this morning…
toressian — uk-uk little crow — high hoarse nark-nark 'straylian raven — aah-aaah forest — korr-korr carries far and little — kar-kar
Image: Crow and Willow Tree, Kawanabe Kyosai, November 1887, public domain, c/- Metropolitan Museum, NY.
A found tanka (kind of) from The Slater Field Guide to Australian Birds by Peter, Pat and Raoul Slater, 2nd edition, 2009 p. 352. Conveniently tanka-wise, Australia has five native corvids, two crows and three ravens.
And for your amusement here’s two wailing ravens
clay retains months of rain surge like a sea underfoot plush round our ankles we jesus-walk on meadows tractors down to axles
Image: Sea of grass, Lake Illawarra
And this morning’s musical offering is some Portuguese fado with Mariza’s 2006 album Transparente (YouTubers)
what to write? what to write? dawn, and in rushes poem enunciates ocean eucalypt bird factory traffic and so on...
Image: The muses, Emmy Towsey (Taussig) and Evelyn Ippen, Bodenwieser, Ballet in Centennial Park, Sydney, c.1939, photo Max Dupain c/- State Library of NSW on Flickr. I know, not a strict tanka today.
And for music today here’s The Carpenters with the Royal Philharmonic with Masquerade. The whole album is a lush delicious bath. Released in 2018, the album features The Carpenters’ original vocal and instrumental tracks accompanied by new orchestral arrangements by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Richard Carpenter produced, arranged and conducted. (Youtubers: Masquerade, Album)
the drone shot shows
how I was wrong —
actually i live on
a branch, leaf, a thaw of frost
a paper boat spiralling
Image: ESA satellite image of Western Australian wheatbelt (detail). After James Galvin.
Some poetic licence today. Actually, I live and work on un-ceded Aboriginal land. I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this work was created — the Wodi Wodi people who are the Aboriginal custodians of the Illawarra — and pay my respects to Elders past and present.
This morning’s musical offering some Canadian country twang from Kacy and Clayton with The Siren’s Song (YouTubers).
neon supermarket — mums among avocados cabbages brilliant packs out back lobstermen clack carapaces on the glass
Image: Young girl with cabbage, Firmin Baes (1874 -1943) c/- Wikimedia. After Allen Ginsberg, A Supermarket in California, 1955
And this morning, some guitar for you from Spanish composer Antón García Abril (1933 – 2021) played by Francisco Bernier (maybe start with track 2 Evocaciones) (YouTubers).
is there a word for
wind beats grass on the hillside
clouds shadow granites
how the light, how your smile
fades imperceptibly ?
Image: Jean Lorraine, New South Wales, Australia, 1940, by Max Dupain, c/- State Library of NSW on Flickr .
And for music this morning, here’s sitar virtuoso Jasdeep Singh Degun with Anomaly (YouTubers )
another sunrise
thermonuclear climbing
from restive waters
so much better on my phone
sharpened tidied swipe right
Image: by Bob Richards c/- Negative Space (slightly tweaked)
and for music this morning, American guitarists William Tyler and Marissa Anderson bring you Lost Futures (Youtubers)
the poetry books sulky on my table still unread still their golden lines impatient my lover calls from our bedroom
Image: by jean wimmerlin on Unsplash. In the Ghost Town of Kolmanskop, Namibia
And for music today, some jazz from Japanese pianist Ryo Fukui. Here’s his album A Letter from Slowboat (YouTubers here). Slowboat was the name of the jazz club Fukui ran in Sapporo.
Peter Frankis writes 