ABPA - Australian Bush Poets Association

THE GIFT
It’s a lilting falling feather;
It’s a waving maiden’s hair;
It puts rain and chill together;
It drifts snowflakes through the air.
It’s a rippled calming ocean;
It’s the driven thunder storm;
It is tumbleweeds slow motion;
And the way tornadoes form.
It’s a brisk caress of skin;
It’s a plume of smoke in-flight;
It’s the curtains billowed in;
It’s the murmurs in the night.
It’s the dancing grass in time;
It’s the swell beneath each bird;
It’s the sound to aid a mime;
And it’s carriage for a word.
It’s a wafting scent of flowers;
It’s the shimmer to a flame;
It’s one of several powers;
And the error in your aim;
It’s the ruffled flap of flags;
It’s the thrust to fill a sail;
It’s a tarp that lifts and sags;
It’s a silent force to gale;
It’s a soaring eagle’s glide;
It’s a hazy wisp of glare;
It’s a kite prepared to ride
Through the gift of wind held bare.
29/08/2011

THE REBIRTH
It can be the warmth you wish for;
It can lighten up the night;
It can flicker ‘round the earth’s core;
It can breathe the fire-light.
It can spark an engine into life;
And breed the lava’s heat;
It can temper out the sharpest knife;
And sizzle ‘low your feet.
It can turn the water into steam;
And be a Norse farewell;
It can raise a phoenix from a dream;
And help a jet propel.
It can be a flare from out the sun;
Or ride a dragon’s speech;
It can drive a bullet from a gun;
And rid a sucking leech.
It can be a sparkled spectacle;
It’s power for a weld;
It can burn coal ‘till electrical;
It’s when a star’s expelled.
It can be a comet’s trailing tail;
An oven’s searing heart;
It can set a smoking sign to sail;
Rend adhesion apart.
It’s Olympic on its thoroughfare;
Has no tangible girth;
It’s in the bush-land cinders where
The ground begins rebirth.
8/09/2011

THE RETURN
It segments layers of the past;
It hides the jewels we mine;
Its ownership on earth is vast;
In sand, its role is fine.
It rides the wind in storms of dust;
It’s won by war-torn fates;
It’s born anew in molten crust;
It’s why a tree gestates.
It’s foundations for everything;
From space, it’s green and blue;
It’s why sonars return their ping;
It’s even Uluru.
It’s dankly, underground, lit caves;
It’s liquefied in mud;
It greets the end of rolling waves;
It’s waterlogged in flood.
Intrinsical to landscaping;
It’s farmed in fertile fields;
It’s, continents still reshaping;
And crests displayed on shields.
It’s fossils stored eons ago;
It’s ‘neath a coral reef;
It filters clean as rivers flow;
It built the world motif.
It washes through a panning sieve;
It formed Canopic urns;
It’s where all life began to live
Onto; that life returns.
17/09/2011

THE DESIGN
It covers seven-tenths of earth;
Supports aquatic life;
Its mooring’s beneath ships at berth;
In draught it’s rarely rife.
It’s oxygen and hydrogen;
Torrentially it falls;
It’s low tide, set to rise again;
It’s oceanic squalls.
It’s nodes of ice in driving rain;
Poseidon’s realm of rule;
It cuts the earth, shaping terrain;
It keeps a fever cool.
It powered ancient aqueducts;
It lifts a risen wave;
It’s homes an Inuit constructs;
It’s blest upon a nave.
Cascading over mountain tops;
It sates a parching thirst;
It trickles life to farming crops;
It fills balloons to burst.
It washes our exterior;
It’s salted like our blood;
It makes a day seem drearier;
It liquefies the mud.
It’s stagnant in a silent pond;
We’re sixty-five percent;
It’s droplets from a cactus frond
Providing nourishment...

By water chiefly cold and wet
The earth is dry and cold,
Then Aristotle mused to let
The aether, also hold,
A cosmic elemental spot
To form the upper sky,
Alas, as air is wet and hot
And fire hot and dry.
The aether hadn’t qualities
Nor momentum beeline,
So thus all spatial entities
Have aetheric design.
10/10/2011
© Copyright 2011 Adam Parker

Well I finally finished it, here it is complete and together.

If you take the titles and run them together. I tried a metaphor for reincarnation. In case it escaped some.

Love it Adam it just works so well - very clever. Good on you - it was worth waiting for

Cheers

Maureen

Thanks Marty, I was a bit worried the last 8 lines didn't fit. Please let me know if I was right, you to Maureen. this wasn't the bush poem I tried.

Excellent Adam. Love them!

Heather

Thanks Heather, still not sure whether the last 8 lines work or not.
How ever I am pretty pissed right now!

An excellent set Adam. I wonder at the titles though seems it would be simpler to use your headings for the post ?

Water, Earth, Wind and Fire ? Then set each in a column of it's own with The Plot as the overall Title.

That last verse does seem a little jagged to me . I think it is the as is and the as in the first and second line and the known in the fifth line. ?

Through water, as is cold and wet
And earth as dry and cold,
With aether as the fifth of set
The purest of the old,
There’s fire known as hot and dry
And air as wet and hot,
The elements from earth to sky
Control the path we plot.

Bob Pacey I. A W. P. Esquire

Don't worry Adam I'm a little pissed too !!!!

aether - is what they perceive as the fifth element, the one element that can not be corrupted by mortal means and is the reason the heavens and celestial bodies don't fall into those elements.

And the reason I didn't admit it.

Bob! I do nothing in the simpler form mate. But I do take my time