Poems: Linear Park, After Storm

Linear Park, After Storm

After Walt Whitman, 1819–1892

Walking by the river after torrential rain,

the water-rushing sound,

the sparkle on the surface –

nasturtiums fur the banks in

yellow splashes on those

lavish, lily-pad leaves they have,

adorned with diamond droplets –

then a flush of sweet peas,

coral pink and violet,

love-hearts above their folded Venus lips –

the sacred ibis sedately walk away but

the Aussie wood-duck family lingers,

plucking at the rain-sprinkled grass,

young and old together but

the parents discreetly vigilant –

oh the wonder of it:

luscious life after a storm.

Linear Park, Leaves and Leavings

It comes and it goes, the rain,

and the river floods and then it slows,

and grass is shiny green above a line,

and dirty brown below,

and caught amongst the trunks and reeds

the litter of the left-behind,

the bark-shreds, sticks and leaves;

A swamp-hen pauses, picks,

iridescent purple chest and forehead glowing red –

another flash of colour might be a lorikeet,

its mates a-chatter overhead, but it’s not:

the rainbow colour’s shopping bags,

knotted ’round some branches in the creek,

the litter of the left behind,

the plastics that we leak.

Living in Adelaide since 1986, Paul Dignam was born in Sydney and spent his childhood years there. In a career in psychiatry of over four decades, he had especial focus on child and adolescent mental health, along with holding senior clinical, leadership and lecturing roles. Retired and widowed, with many children and grandchildren, his further interests are in drawing, writing and reading, rowing and walking, and psychotherapy supervision. From his first published piece being in the 2011 edition of the Jesuit journal Eureka Street, Paul has found ‘an increasing sense of poetry as an emotional diary, for the last twenty years or so’. More can be found about Paul here.

Readers’ original and unpublished poems of up to 40 lines can be emailed, with postal address, to [email protected]. Submissions should be in the body of the email, not as attachments. A poetry book will be awarded to each accepted contributor.