BEING KAREN

A memory from Melbourne lockdown surfaced this morning ... I might be Australian, but I am a Melbourne girl. This is my city, she shaped me and we have grown up together. My personal compass has pointed me far from home often. My cardinal points are here, they do not change. Melbourne sleeps now, her thousand eyes are closed. Soon, soon, not soon enough, the shops and galleries, arcades and bookshops, cafes, theatres and market stalls will come back to life. And so will our

It was a busy night. Saturday night. There were countless young men who had broken themselves in so many different ways (oh, being a mother never stops being hard.) There were old women who were alone sick, no-one there to hold their hand, it will be okay. And Dad. Dad who was having a moment, and it was making us a have a moment, and it was causing the nurses and interns to have a more than a moment. But they just couldn’t get it to work, they could not do what needed to be

Second hand is a cold term, these books have been loved and now are moving on to new lovers. ‘You are the only person I know who reads poetry’. A phone call from a friend who is helping another friend pack up the home of her parents; both of whom had been life long academics at Melbourne University. The house looks like an opium dream I might have, every room crammed with books and the daughter begging me to take as many I want to. I am open mouthed and shocked that she can’t

I made a home with a man I made him sons We grew it, a family home And then it was not The waves that crashed through were made of time and betrayal Sons do not stay at home forever And neither do some men I opened my home to another man I ran here, ran there, gathering, to welcome him, This home a gateway, new life, new country The wave that took him, he caught it like a bus. Picking up small things he left behind, seaweed on a sorrowful beach, learning how not to be a thin

I wrote this in 2019, it appeared in my Facebook memories this morning, strangely prophetic now ... It’s all widdershins. Don’t speak to me of retrogrades, a moment, a passing by in the sky of the malign and mischievous. No. The world is turning the wrong way. And everything that was solid is now made of glass. Brittle, shiny and treacherous. Dazzling mirrors of danger, and stage left when you are holding everything in your right. The little gods are quiet, burrowing deep, th

Last year I turned 60. That was expected. However 2020 was not the year any of us were expecting. Here in Australia we started the year in the grip of truly catastrophic bushfires. Our country was burning beneath our feet. Our Prime Minister was in Hawaii on holiday. It was a grotesque Circus, the worst nightmare. I painted water and prayed for rain. My palette was white, silver, grey, all the blues I had on hand. It rained the next day and I could not stop laughing. We thoug