December #4

You Should So Ask For Help ...

You should so ask for help

that a wind will rise from the stones

and swirl around you, buoyant:

a soft cloak, a raft of air,

a sweet in-rush of breath.

You should so ask for help

that rain will fall gently, washing

all debris away from your path,

so you walk forth unobstructed

raising your face to be bathed.

You should so ask for help

that the grasses will ripple before you

like waves of an earth ocean,

as they flatten to ease your steps

and spring back straight behind.

You should so ask for help

that the sun and all the stars

brighten and flare at your call,

and people around you suddenly smile 

as you yourself are warmed.

First you must ask for help

to ask in such a way — must ask

for the long slow gifts 

of trust and patience,

humility, strength, integrity.

Or find the quicker way:

pray to be an instrument

of Love, Peace and Truth. 

Create with these a vision so large 

that all you are and do is in its service.

Whether you sleep or wake,

speak or be silent, scratch an itch,

make love, argue, go shopping ...

the vision is more than you; it holds you,

contains and fills you — that one!

Be prepared for your vision to take

if need be, lifetimes, and leagues of angels.

Seek to enrol the whole world

on to your team. Ask for help....

Take heart. You should so ask.

— Rosemary Nissen-Wade

November #4

Old Lady with Cat

While my body snores

at last, on these humid nights,

he, my black-haired darling,

prowls the cool outdoors.

Mornings he's nearly always

back, sharing my bed,

accepting an embrace

before requiring breakfast.

If I wake up still alone,

by the time I open the door

he's running up the front steps

calling a greeting.

We remember the others

who were here, whom we loved,

but now they are ghosts, and this

is the end time (may it be long)

when we, being finally only two,

are all-in-all to each other.

In age we learn the true things —
e.g. this is important, e.g. this is enough.

— Rosemary Nissen-Wade

October #4

Diagrams in Felt-Tipped Pen

Or in pencil. Or biro.

Sometimes even fountain-pen —

we used them then, and my parents

gave me a slim one for my twelfth birthday.

The felt tips, of course, came quite a lot later.

But I never lost the habit,

starting in school exercise books.

'You're a great old doodler, aren't you?'

one English teacher said — but tolerantly.

I was always top of the class in English, after all.

It was an aid to thinking.

Don't ask me how that could be;

I only know it worked for me. Between

taking notes, I filled the corners of the pages

with close, elaborate, complex, abstract shapes.

Nothing recognisable —

not at all realist, nor naturalist.

It was all geometric: endless variations

of triangles, rectangles, diamonds, squares,

tempered by circles and coils, arcs and undulations.

After creating the outline

I might then decide on sections

to fill in solid, painstakingly making

new patterns in the old traditional shapes.

Each pattern piece was tiny; the whole, intricate.

When Rorschach tests became

the latest whizz-bang thing, back in

the seventies, some of my (ahem!) friends

wondered aloud what my doodles might reveal

and made rude, amused speculations, with guffaws.

By then, I was doodling upon

telephone message pads, train tickets,

restaurant menus, as well as my own journals

and the edges of any letters I still wrote by hand —

the ones to elderly relatives, who still thought that polite.

Those who knew me well

came to accept this eccentricity.

They seldom even remarked on it any more.

I decided it had to do with the pattern-making urge

and therefore, I supposed, not inappropriate for a poet.

Then the whole world changed.

Now I write emails on computer, make poems

on my iPad, jot down the shopping lists on my phone.

We text each other details we need to remember. No place

for proliferating diagrams in felt-tipped or any other kind of pen.

— Rosemary Nissen-Wade

September #4

They Try Again

They try again
to recollect the flavour
of what was,
hunting through trophies
only they can find:
the personal phrases,
the unimportant
yet cherished habits —

but it's thundery cold outside
and they who hide within
are only two now,
who must make new tales
to warm themselves, other
memories to gather later.

— Rosemary Nissen-Wade

August #4

It Only Needs to Win Once — You Think? 

Courage, you think,

only needs to win once.

After that you can relax,

never fear again,

be always brave and daring,

confident like others —

the everyone else

who, you're always being told,

aren't scared.

But it doesn't work like that.

Courage is needy, wanting 

your full attention,

refusing to be taken for granted.

It wants to own you;

catching you with your pants down,

wants to give you a thrill — the biggest.

Courage is a very

demanding lover.

Or else it's a wilful child

that runs away.

You have to chase after it,

find it, bring it home,

settle it — embrace it

all over again.

Every time.

Too bad if you tire 

of the game.

You think you only need

to win once,

but it's not enough.

Each time is new —

new effort, journey, struggle, 

catch of breath.

But then, it's all that terror

(grin) 

provides the thrill.

— Rosemary Nissen-Wade

July #4

Easy, Do What's Right
A Dedication

I walk in procession

by candlelight, 

cloaked in white 

for my pure intention. 

We form a circle. 

I make affirmation

claiming myself as Goddess,

Daughter of the Divine.

The two women presiding

gently remove the white, 

enfold me

in my own rich magenta.

Earlier, my magenta cloak

lay stretched across the altar

between the candelabra

and the ceremonial sword.

Alone in the temple

I, who in my long life

bent the knee to none,

was moved to kneel to the Goddess.

Private vows; public avowal.

Afterwards all the women dance,

and I with them,

in our cloaks of light.

I am wrapped

in the peace of the Goddess,

embraced by the warmth

of my sisters.

I walk forward

into this new, late stage of life

and find it easy,
knowing it is right.

— Rosemary Nissen-Wade

June #4

Round and Round and Round and Round …

And round we go again,

spinning again on this pretty planet

as if the intricate dance 

were forever, its patterns important.

The moment seems to matter.

My cats are old and sick, my man is dead.

Tell me that’s not important.

Important to me — but not to some stranger

across the world, not to

animals in zoos or jungles, not at all

to insects living their little lives

and not to the stars in space, nor the space.

My friend is sad for her old mother

finally dead in her nineties: wondering, “Did I do 

enough?” (She did. I was witness.)

All these small human dramas we all repeat,

caught in the cycle. As if brand new

as we each meet each one as if for the first time.

Yet when we sink to restful emptiness,

how well we know that music, that old refrain.

It wells up to remind us, nothing 

is new, nothing is really unknown, nothing 

is individual. We spin our lives

again and again on our spinning planet.

Round and round and round and round 

we go again — caught in the spin, dreaming 

our little dramas as if they were real, 

as if we were here, as if we were now, as if….

(Lately I dream that I dream.

Does this mean I’m ready to wake?)

— Rosemary Nissen-Wade

("Round and round and round and round we go again" — I'm not plagiarising, just alluding!)

May #4

Suits Her Just Fine

Pleasure is now

a mug of cocoa, 

an Anzac biscuit

and a fine book to read.

Well, it always was —

but she remembers too

shopping at night in Kathmandu,

or meeting that shaman in Cusco.

She remembers lovers, 

their beautiful faces

and questing minds,

including the three she married.

And oh, she remembers loss,

hands that she held

as their owners died ...

the emptiness of dead bodies.

Now her elderly cat

comes every night

to lie beside her

on the wide bed.

The bed is warm.

The cat purrs.

Pain in muscle and bone

subsides.

— Rosemary Nissen-Wade

April #4

Lifting the Lid

The things we find when we go deep

can be mysterious, like dreams.

Descending the abyss of sleep,

we find not all is what it seems.

For dreams use symbols, and distort

the things we find when we go deep.

Decoding leaves us overwrought,

unsure if we should laugh or weep.

Yet, if we take a wakeful peep

below the lid of consciousness,

the things we find when we go deep

may still be anybody's guess.

Myself, I'd rather meditate 

(the path of therapy being too steep)

and in that peace to contemplate

the joy I find when things go deep.

— Rosemary Nissen-Wade

March #4

The Point is the Light

We walk from the temple

after the feast,

down the hill to the car.

Navigating uneven ground, 

I catch a glint between stones: 

black sheen,

and a blue-green inky sliver.

A peacock's chest feather?

The splinter of colour

along its spine

flashes iridescent 

against the surrounding dark.

I turn it this way and that

between finger and thumb —

such a tiny thing —

watching the brightness 

move and spread.

My friend finds another,

rainbow stripes fanning

wide across the tip.

"They're both yours," she insists.

(Earlier, over dinner,

she helped fend off 

that oaf who tried to hit on me.)

— Rosemary Nissen-Wade

February #4

Off the Rails

Good girl mostly,

dreams herself

light and white,

fairy-like.

Shivers, though, 

in the night,

when the red

rises inside ...

Or when the black

swirls around her

and she sinks

beneath its tide.

The demons,

the dragons,

the serpents 

invite her.

Tensing her mind,

she locks out

their fearful 

seductions.

So it goes

for the years

of her growing.

Then, explosion.

The rushing red

can't be contained,

the deadly black

won't be denied.

They froth forth

in cataclysmic

eruptions —

then subside.

Slipping and sliding

right off the rails,

she plunges

down the cliff.

Revelation:

she floats on

an ocean

of wondrous calm.

The voices

were always her own.

She opens herself

to their song.

— Rosemary Nissen-Wade

January #4

What Links Us

My neighbour is playing his music.

This afternoon our windows 

are closed against the heat

yet still I hear the heavy pulse

of the drum, of my throbbing blood,

my heartbeat, everyone's heart,

across our dividing courtyard.

This morning I swam

in the hydrotherapy pool.

There was my old friend Irwin, 

stretching his herniated discs.

'I can't do this in the river,' he said,

and I remembered all of us swimming 

with him in his river, years ago.

At Christmas I went back

to the town I grew up in.

The hospital there, where I was born

and my little brother was born,

was also where my Nana, who'd held me
in her lap, died. I was four. 

Now I am 74. I still love her.

The handsome lizard in my kitchen —

how did that get in? — didn't scurry away

but kept very still. I opened the back door

and fetched the broom. Could I

manoeuvre it out? I don't like 

killing the creatures. Oh, but this one

was dead already, a gift from the cat.

Do I put these things before you

as question, answer, or neutral description?

Not to instruct you how to think,

let me just tell you what I imagine:

all the trees of the world messaging each other,

their roots connected through earth 

and their branches sharing the air.

— Rosemary Nissen-Wade