Poems with editorial assistance from Jean Talbot, NSW Regional Meeting.
The poems in this edition of The Australian Friend were created in response to the landscape at Silver Wattle Quaker Centre, on the shores of Lake George (or Weereewa in the local Indigenous language), near Bungendore, NSW.
The writers gathered at the Centre last month ‘to develop their creative writing from a spiritual base’ under the guidance of Mark MacLeod and Jean Talbot. The writing course created a safe and nurturing environment in which participants were encouraged to be adventurous, experiment with form and feeling, and share their work by reading aloud to the group.
All felt their time at the Centre encouraged deep exploration of their connection with the landscape.
Weereewa
I speak the dialect, I share the currency,but Weereewa is foreign territory to me, a sojourner from the humid north.
Guides lead me up the pilgrim’s path, purple-carpeted by Salvation Jane.Heights humble, offer long perspectives of geological as opposed to human time. Below us, Silver Wattle Point secures a lakeside beach for human habitation.Like local eucalypts, the buildings hunch their shoulders against capricious winds,harnessed for power on farther shores. Boundary fences diminishing to dotted lines, weathered posts and rails, stock gates and grids mark earlier pastoral enterprises by this lake.On the dry lake bed graze kangaroos. Their leaps of faith mock human bounds.
How appropriate, how particularly Australian that Friends should seek to found a centre here at Weereewa, a lake that’s dry in barren seasons, yet remains ready, ever faithful to the promise of cycles of renewal. A vast reservoir of hope.Susan Addison November 2010
Susan Addison, November 2010
Meditations at Silver Wattle
The lake
like a spirit-level
before me,
a scarp behind.
The infinite lines
of the hills to the south
hold my eye;
they retreat from the glare of the sun.
Silence across the floor
of the lake,
silence across the floor
of the room.
A few well chosen wordsfind their level.
Steve Armstrong November 2010
Walking the sedges
In this way
by small steps
we crush what we cherish
not noticing loss
until suddenly
it’s gone
and dead
is dead
too long.
Virginia Jealous, November 2010
Lifelines
for Steve, at Lake George
There you are
hungrily walking the long flat
watching the contoured slopes, the lake’s
wide open line
stalking something in the distance or, maybe,
something too close to see
weighing each step, each word
like a heavy thing that lightens
as it falls
into these straight lines
Look to the edges. Horizon interrupted
by nothing but the horizon
over there
and here,
inside
Virginia Jealous,November 2010
Wee-ree-wa.
North.
Cars race around ancient shores.
Oil power.
Wee-ree-wa.
South.
Lights blaze from village and mine.
Coal power.
Wee-ree-wa.
East.
White sails silently turning.
Wind power.
Wee-ree-wa.
West.
Silver Wattle. Grace and peace.
God power.
Anne Felton October 2010
Haiku from Silver Wattle
Afternoon chill:
clouds close off the sky.
Down here, the blue wrens.
Spring’s here.
Icy winds from the snowfields
haven’t heard yet.
Jean Talbot, November 2010
