Category Archives: Country

November 2, 2022 · 2:59 pm

Connected – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Mish is hosting Poetics with an invitation to write commemorating a loved one.

dVerse Poets – Poetics – Dia De Los Muertos

Photo: Newcarlbeon Rock near Koorda. Taken a few weeks back in early spring, a misty sunrise, a thin place for me.

“Heaven and earth, the Celtic saying goes, are only three feet apart, but in thin places that distance is even shorter.” Kerri Ni Dochartaigh

Connected

This is a thin time
where realms are unseparated,
a cure for the soul's myopia
long lost in binary spaces,
momentarily set free,
reminding that death is
not the death we imagine,
you are ever here,
the villain of my childhood
now redeemed in a hagiography,
saint as sinner, sinner as saint,
we are intertwined,
embodied,
connected.


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️

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October 3, 2022 · 2:46 pm

Recentered – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Photo: Koorda Wildflower Reserve, the sun setting in the west.

“Find your center and stay there. It will allow you to live your life to its maximum.” Barbara Ann Kipfer

Recentered

When the heft is hard and the cost too high
I retreat to the wilding of the bush,
where the tracks are narrow,
no neon to light the scrub that 
rings the ageless lichened granite,
raw places of song-larks, echidnas,
goannas along the winter creeks who draw 
down the crisp morning air with a crackle,
and evening's dappled light amidst the trees
is such joy I forget myself and I am recentered 
once again.


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️

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August 24, 2022 · 3:49 pm

Perhaps It’s The Cypress After All – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse guest host Jo is hosting Poetics with an invitation to write about scent.

dVerse Poets – Poetics – A World of Common Scents

Photo: State Forest reserve in Kirup, Western Australia, forests have their own, very complex scents.

“She stood for a long time breathing in and breathing in, the scent of the trees ….” Margaret Atwood

Perhaps It's The Cypress After All

Cypress stirs my body memory,
so too the wattle blossom of winter,
ah, yes, the wet dog after rain at the
salted, seaweed strewn beach remains,
along with cinnamon toast on a cold 
night's mist, the sweat of love pulsing
my inarticulate flesh, simple scents, 
the easy embodiments of youth.

But what of the hidden things,
is there a scent for wisdom or
compassion, is there a scent for 
soul, for reflection? 

Perhaps it's the cypress after all.



Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
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June 8, 2022 · 2:00 pm

The Way Of Summer – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Merril is hosting Poetics with an invitation to write an ekphrastic poem using one or more of five paintings provided, I chose ‘Hip, Hip hurrah’ by Peder Severin Kroyer.

dVerse Poets – Poetics – Sun, Sand, Storms, and Celebrations, Summer Ekphrastic

Painting: Peder Severin Kroyer – Hip, Hip, Hurrah

“In summer the song sings itself.” Wiliam Carlos Williams

The Way Of Summer

There's something the way a summer sun
warms a champagne afternoon and entertains
with celebrating dragonflies in louder boozy buzz,
while cicadas sing in unison as soft dandelion seeds 
ride the warm air so slowly as to be countable, 
and somehow the food and wine are more real, 
more vital than ever before, our eyes tell of 
meaning, of love, of healing, our stories passionate,
there's something about the way a gathering warms 
and opens the heart in a gentle intoxication of joy.


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
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May 12, 2022 · 2:46 pm

Are We Listening? – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Photo: from spring 2018, Leda Nature Reserve, Everlastings in full bloom. (One or two rains and the bush comes alive)

“The forest makes your heart gentle, You become one with it … No place for greed or anger there.” Pha Pachak

Are We Listening?

Do winds come to die, or the 
ocean exhaust itself upon the shore,
are trees silent before the storms of
humanity, does grass wither?
You might think it if you took no time 
to stop and listen, for trees speak in
silences and grass always regenerates,
while oceans shout in their return,
winds take time to rest and even the
soil speaks if we would but listen.


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®

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April 5, 2022 · 3:23 pm

Unspeakable – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Lisa is hosting the Quadrille (44 words)with an invitation to write a poem using some form of the word season.

dVerse Poets – Quadrille – Tis The Season

Photo: Early autumn in Deepdene, red gums shedding.

“Autumn is as joyful and sweet as an untimely end.” Remy de Gourmont

Unspeakable

The seeds of my tangled life are sown 
along the edge of autumn's invitation,
a propitiation for all that is yet to arise,
an imaginarium of coloured experiences
only the sense can speak, a whelming
of the darkened cave transcended in
spring's awaited consolation.


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
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March 19, 2022 · 2:14 pm

There Is Always A Way – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Photo: austockphoto.com.au

“If the stable gate is closed, climb the fence.” Julie Krone 

There Is Always A Way

The gate was old, full of character,
but obstinate, refusing to budge
at even my firm handed push,
the gouge in the soil testimony 
to its sunken hinges, forcing me 
to lift it clear every time with a 
sigh acknowledging my own 
resistance to repairing it, partly
in knowing that all gates 
eventually sink, and knowing
that there is always a way 
around and not just through.


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
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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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January 29, 2022 · 11:10 pm

Can We? – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Photo: The remains of a railway worker’s house at Yellowdine.

“Sometimes the things you remember are more real than the things you see.” Arthur Golden

Can We?

I thought I remembered this place,
but my feelings were clouded and I
couldn't  recover what it was that 
I had expected of this moment, 
all vested in cherished memories now 
unrealised in the faces of strangers,
and changes everywhere interfering 
in my attempts to find connections,
and I asked myself once again,
can we ever go back?


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
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December 9, 2021 · 3:41 pm

One Long, Glorious Pilgrimage – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Photo: Imperial Eagle, Spain, by Barbee Anne, pixabay.com

“The punishment imposed on us for claiming true self can never be worse than th epunishment we impose on ourselves by failing to make that claim.” Parker J. Palmer

One Long, Glorious Pilgrimage

My life began wider than the ocean,
and so vulnerable to the eagle's sight,
soaring in the beauty of life, aiming
for the sun, grappling in the dark of
connection's lack as I wander this 
earth in one, long glorious pilgrimage
of constant diversion, ever seeking to
move away from the magnetic pull
towards narrow ways that strangle
any sense of true self.


Copyright 2021 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®

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