Category Archives: camping

March 15, 2022 · 2:32 pm

I Broke Away – Prosery by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Lillian is hosting Prosery (144 words) with an invitation to use the line “I wandered lonely as a cloud.” from the William Wordsworth poem ‘I wander lonely as a cloud.”

dVerse Poets – Prosery – Winter Be Gone

Photo: from our 2017 road trip through central Australia and down through South Australia, back to Western Australia along the coast. This photo taken along the Nullarbor, the ocean not visible, but further beyond the van is the Great Australian Bight.

“How sweet to be a cloud, floating in the blue.” A.A. Milne

I Broke Away

I wandered lonely as a cloud, not that that is a bad thing in and of itself. I finally broke away from all that encompassing bank of cloud that consumed me, owned me, clouded me. Just one big cloud of everything the same. Sometimes we were white and summery, sometimes grey and uncertain, sometimes black and laden with water. I wanted something else, something more.

I wanted reds, purples, pinks and oranges, colours of excitement, adventure. Colours of day and night, autumn and spring, storm and still. I wanted big and I wanted small. I wanted essence. So I broke away and floated along, determined to discover my cloudness. I wandered lonely as a cloud, and for the first time, entirely happy. Space was mine and I could come and go, and sometimes I need just that, to be far from the madding cloud.


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
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March 1, 2022 · 2:14 pm

No Bluff On The Knoll – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Frank is hosting the Haibun with an invitation to write inspired by Hanshan (Cold Mountain) the mystical figure of Chinese poetry (9th C) – option 1 to write about a mountain experience real or metaphorical, or 2 to follow the experience of Hanshan. For more detail, follow the link below.

dVerse Poets – Haibun Monday – Cold Mountain

Photo: The summit of Bluff Knoll, 1,100 metres shrouded that day in mist (cold and misty at the top, autumnal and warm rainy middle, summer at the bottom).

“My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing.” Aldous Huxley 

No Bluff On The Knoll

It wasn't sudden by any means. Autumn was giving leave of senses and we decided, he and I, to create a moment, an event in our lives that mattered in the cool of that meaningful April, when summer was on the run and winter was leaving hints everywhere in our path. We decided on Bluff Knoll, a small but determined mount worthy of a days climb that would fracture our patterned minds, opening us to something new.

We watched each other for signs of something, I don't really know what. But I know he gave of his youth and I surrendered my pretences , he not judging, me simply admitting my limitations and grateful for his patience as I aged along the way. The physical exertion so demanding we were not inclined to talk much, but in the valley of debrief there was deep gratitude. If there is a god, they were in our unspoken, heartfelt glances divine. It was enough.

Before us the knoll
ever the old ways we know
autumn brings new eyes



Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
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October 12, 2021 · 2:37 pm

Fierce Beauty – prose by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Mish is hosting Posery with an invitation to using a line form TS Eliot’s poem ‘The Waste Land.’

dVerse Poets – Prosery – The Waste Land

The line offered and which must be included is: “What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow out of this stony rubbish?”

Photo: an example of eremophila taken at Niagara near Kookynie.

“According to ancient mythology, trees link the earth to the sky. In this respect trees link humans to another world.” Richard Allen

Fierce Beauty

The eastern goldfields suffer only the strong or determined living in the extremities across these vast open plains of mostly dry laterite and also quartz, granite and sandstone outcrops populated by shy fauna and rugged flora. The summer is merciless, the winter winds penetrate layers. The rainfall is pitiful, the reason the state government commissioned the grand and ambitious Goldfields Water Supply Scheme in 1896.

When the rains do come they seem to evaporate before they touch the surface soil, and it is a wonder that anything could grow in such a place. Which raises the question, what are the roots that clutch, what branches grow out of this stony rubbish? Dozens in fact, varieties of eucalyptus, acacia, eremophila, grevillea, and callistemon tenaciously hang on out here where humans wilt. When the sun is fierce, the soil unforgiving, the trees are beautifully fiercer.

Copyright 2021 ©Paul Vincent Cannon

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September 21, 2021 · 12:15 pm

Of Things Past – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Linda is hosting the Quadrille (44 words) with an invitation to write about the word linger or any of its forms.

dVerse Poets – Quadrille – Linger

Photo: an old Ford truck – part of the history of Kookynie and mining.

“Grief is the agony of an instant; the indulgence of grief the blunder of a life.” Benjamin Disraeli 

Of Things Past

The past lurks in the present,
intensifying the sense of wanting
to restore, heal, the original 
intention once the pride of purpose,
now a felt grief, an if only, raising the
question: can we overcome the grief
of things past that linger within us?


Copyright 2021 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
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September 19, 2021 · 2:10 pm

The Real Story – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Photo: Late afternoon sun across our campsite at Boondi Rock, gimlets reaching for the sky and casting shadows.

“Friendship is a sheltering tree.” Samuel Taylor Coleridge 

The Real Story

Trees tower over me reaching for the sun,
speaking to the sky in words beyond me,
with ancient meaning lingering the boughs,

∼ but the real story is an understory spoken ∽

soft and low, gently grazing my ears with 
a delicate language greater than height of
fine soul thirsty for the traffic of connection.


Copyright 2021 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
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September 11, 2021 · 2:42 pm

Nature Smiles – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Photo: looking from the back wall of one former pub to another. Ruins at Kookynie, a former gold-rush town once boasting a mayor and council, and 10, 000 people and seven pubs.

“What’s old collapses, times change, and new life blossoms in the ruins.” Friedrich Schiller

Nature Smiles 

The soft ghosts of landscapes clutch longingly
at our feet, seeking to pull us in, desiring our 
hearts be held in this place in reverence less
seen, even neglected, now populated by the
ruins of past dreams faded with the stretch of
time, no longer elastic in this brittle earth where
moisture cannot abide, where hope recedes
like a recoil, and all the while nature smiles at
our dogged attempts to take charge, patiently
waiting for the penny to drop.


Copyright 2021 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
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September 9, 2021 · 2:35 pm

Horizon Decon – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Photo: the Goldfields Woodlands regional park, camped at Boondi Rock. The open woodlands are so attractive.

“Deconstruction insists not that truth is illusory but that it is institutional.” Terry Eagleton

Horizon Decon

I'm digging up my highway,
deconstructing my horizon,
I'm celebrating the wheels
falling of my juggernaut,
ceasing making meaning where 
meaning can never be found,
letting go the madness of 
plausible voices, that eternal
cat's cradle of string never to
unravel, I'm taking down the 
frame-work of dull sensibility,
I'm making space for working
with what I've already been given.


Copyright 2021 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
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September 8, 2021 · 3:26 pm

Winter’s Reign – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Sanaa is hosting Poetics with an invitation to choose from either provided sentences or to write a few words that come to mind and to change a word(s) to its derivative and then weave the word into a poem.

dVerse Poets – Poetics – Dungeons and Derivatives

Photo: Yellow pompom daisies east of Mt. Magnet.

“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.” Albert Camus

Winter's Reign

Her coffin was a tempest raging,
sharp daggers of flashing light,
awash with cold water down its sides,
clouded in foreboding darkness,
she was restless even in death and,
sensing a struggle we rushed
forward and placed her hands in 
repose and closed the lid, no more
will she rage in these parts, 
time to celebrate her passing.


Copyright 2021 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
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September 6, 2021 · 2:34 pm

Cathedral Of Grand Ideas – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Photo: campfire at Peter Denny lookout near Sandstone. There’s something primal about fire!

“The moment something ends, a spectacular new voyage begins in the unseen.” Hiral Nagda

Cathedral Of Grand Ideas

The trees gave fragments, 
igniting my mind with a 
language of fire, composed of 
intricate thought elements
reaching up to the sky as
skeletal bones of frame,
marking out a cathedral of
grand ideas that will inflame
passions and set fire to our 
eyes of knowing, new energy
arising from the ash of rutted 
ways.


Copyright 2021 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
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September 5, 2021 · 2:04 pm

Our Deep – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Photo: setting sun, Peter Denny lookout near Sandstone.

“The longest journey is the journey inward.” Dag Hammarskjold

Our Deep

Surrender to commonsense is the denial of mystery,
a failure to go beyond the obvious and enter the unknown,
a dive beneath the surface of what we imagine we hold
through the slants and hooks of impossible fantasies.

A failure to go beyond the obvious and enter the unknown,
to pierce the very heart of surprise lurking in our deep,
through the slants and hooks of impossible fantasies,
strange experiences we uneasily inhabit as fish in a net.

To pierce the very heart of surprise lurking in our deep,
that place of elastic overtures preceding epiphanies,
strange experiences we uneasily inhabit as fish in a net,
now finding holes in the crocheted map of perceptions.

That place of elastic overtures preceding epiphanies,
a dive beneath the surface of what we imagine we hold
now finding holes in the crocheted map of perceptions,
surrender to commonsense is the denial of mystery.


Copyright 2021 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
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