Earth To Malachi (After Basho after a fashion)

By Malachi Doyle.

Ear to my tree —

Different cloud

Masses & strata —

Moving — tempos —

Observing

The voice of my tree advised me — the tree’s friend — to listen to the live version of the Byrds’ ‘Lover of the Bayou’ with fresh ears — surprisingly garrulous — as a teacher sometimes must be with children.

On the contemporary Melbourne Middle Classes’ Neo-Victorianism:

I’ve seen too

Much

To mince words

Sometimes,

when the world is spinning too fast —

a notepad on my knee

& a pen brings calm

My mind is swirling

With insults & hits

Over the years —

(Space, silence &

PTSD & grief)

I needed to clear my head & go outside for a long bush walk. It was good. When I warmed up, off came the beanie, the scarf, the jumper & eventually my t-shirt.

The second time I put my ear to my/the tree — whispering loving assurances to it & it healing to me embracing it whole heartedly, deep & sustained — the hug —

It took longer to speak.

But when I left Its embrace & walked a few steps, I was left with a word:

“Assignation.” As in to give a task, a role to someone (a ‘job title’?) I think.

A word I thought I’d forgotten — I didn’t realize I knew — I can’t remember learning it —

But yes! Think that’s the meaning — as in to give — to ‘assign’ meaning —

Beautiful — (I might look it up).

It even rained a bit. Was lovely —& then after — it stopped — the birds gleeful — the kangaroos grooving…

No, I’m wrong — assignation — meaning a meeting — according to

The Oxford English Dictionary — a situation when two or more people meet, by chance

or arrangement —as in “he intrigued her on their first meeting.”

Maybe I will go back again & see what happens on another day, at another time.

I guess it’s an old fashioned thing to believe that communication of meaning or learning takes countless revisits, & that meaning or knowledge doesn’t come immediately.

“Assignation”: Ah! An appointment! Typically made in secret —

Have I betrayed it by writing about it, therefore?

I will remain silent.

Or yes! From the French — to attribute.

I feel it more the French.

But then it also throws into question — the belief that people are entitled to demand to know — regardless of their attributes or intentions.

Or is culture carried only by some?

Sure enough…

Today,

The stone

Reiterated it —

“Assignation”

The television appears in the middle of the Forest.

& capitalism arrived like the colonists. —

Trading, gamblers, privateers, mercenaries, & life underwent assault upon assault.

The tornado is not Mother Nature. It is the Free Market.

Ok, I thought I would feel better having done a selfless thing — this “Assignation.”

But as my Jamaican friend, Richard says, when I do something like that — “you’re talking like a dead man.” — World that demands we think & behave selfishly — “my bank account not yours.”

I guess moving against the tide is tiring? — that wants its writers to sell their stories & steal the limelight —

Unless you do so, some snake oil peddler will steal it.

Ok, I’ve lost the mic, but maybe it’s the beginning of a learning? —

If we’re always busy in action, how deep do we ever really go? (…)

The no word today was a feeling

Of love —

Uniting the tree &

Embracing.

On the flipside, (how us humans love the dialectic) — no energy — for heavy lifting — but no one else seems to want to do it — hence sometime my writing sounds bitter — I’m tired —

Can’t people THINK for THEMSELVES?! All plugged in to Multinationals perpetually.

I haven’t really walked in 3 days. Just drinking really. & now it’s night & I’m desperate to fill my lungs with clear air.

The past 2 meetings with the tree introduced “Love” & “Heart.”

This Heart time I wept & the tree comforted my human misery. Then when I went to put my sweater on — it snared on a shrub I hadn’t noticed. We met. It put up with my human investigations — I took a couple of small leaves to smell them —they communicated a wonderful, refreshing almost “…” freshness.

And I commenced my return walk it felt like a trudge — “I think I’d better go” —

but I knew I didn’t want to — so I lay down — on the midwinter ground —

finding, as Coleridge & Wordsworth attested to — that some such floors are lush but quite dry.

I lay down & looked up through the canopy at the late June southern sky.

(Northern Hemisphere readers have to reverse the seasons — give or take* — to get the idea)

Tanka:

“Love” —

“The heart” —

Violent world

Won’t be healed

With more rage.

But loving is easier said than done — What with men with machines destroying the peace & quiet — the guy in the fruit shop coughing & spluttering all over the mushrooms — & generally, being a step ahead of me — blocking my easy way — the woman who nearly ran over me backing out of the carpark — coming off an — alcohol binge — unstable brain chemistry — being high strung — haemorrhoids — finding few people with the vocabulary or knowledge base or mere passion for life to share a conversation with — my own inflexibility — social anxiety — being what the squares call “neuro diverse” — war mongers — bad drivers — free range parenting — in short, the irritations that block up one’s heart — sensory discomfort — pain & anxiety — the 2 main causes of stress according to Ainslie Mears — true, I’ve forgotten to meditate recently — but even that has become infiltrated during a brief trial to do so in a group — & the doctrinaire New Agers who shove ‘answers’ down your throat — when you just want to silently breathe for a while in a shared space & leave.

Tanka:

I heard the

Kookaburra laugh —

I think at

My mental activity

— not to mention the horrors of the world — war — maniac dictators — private armies. —

Don’t mention it — you’ll never write that love poem —

The chaos created by Internet think tanks —

How to LOVE now?

— & yet one has no choice —

It’s a matter of Poetry perhaps — a man & a tree — (hu)Man & nature — a microcosm — a hill of beans — a dream — I dreamed of Love — I don’t want to relinquish that Dream.

— The Media is failing to do its job — it’s not digesting events properly — the pros are tip toeing through the tulips — not as a dance — but as a dirge — the insights blunting — people believing it’s not up to each person to think deeply —

the Google Search Model — that every Question has a simple Answer — that there

Is a Solution to Life. —

Love is not an answer — it is a Feeling — that unites — that embraces — that uplifts — that something or others — it’s not a Thing — not a Method — I don’t claim to be an Expert — nobody is — else it would be Packaged & Sold. —

I have no Wisdom — I am a Fool — I tremble & shake — & fall in the pool of Tears & Blood & Laughter & Madness — ‘what is this Quintessence? — a speech — a poem — a soliloquy — of a fool. —

Maybe we need to feel more varieties of emotions — & know we’re Sufficient — sufficiently

Fools. —

I’m with

The Kookaburras —

Laughing

At myself —

Sharing the

Joke. —

I just have to let go of the Rage. — I’ve passed the cut off stage — I’m an old codger now — too old — too cold — too blue — partially true. — Ha!

Haiku :

Time to heal —

No more putting

It off

10.

Another midwinter’s bush walk — almost balmy weather…

Double Tanka:

I lay in the

Thicket for so long

I forgot I was looking

Up —

Reveries amongst the

Finches

& other canopy

Birds

Whose names I know not,

Though I do,

Their

Dances

11.

One Country haiku followed by one City haiku:

quiet —

a privilege

a need

ii.

a rush to the

city & home

to get there to rush

I hadn’t spoken to anyone for 3 days. Then I get a call from a friend in the city. & they’re moving from phone to Bluetooth in the car, back to the phone, to buy the dog food & “sorry I lost you again”, “how much for the milk?” to the cashier & back outside the shop & then “I lost you again” & then the Bluetooth in the car & walking in the door & the complaint from the wife & we never got to talk about anything. & you called me. So what was all that about? — Hyperactivity for the sake of hyperactivity. No centre. No connection. Madness. Melbourne 2023.

Haiku:

Take me

Back to

The trees

12.

A night or two after “Assignation,” a dream answered a question I’d been gently pondering for a month or so. (It seems I have ‘bigger’ dreams here — far from the madding crowd & the mediascape of sub/urban work & living?).

The answer was a tad surprising — it exceeding the question & answered others. “Assignation” I heard again.

Nevertheless, because I’m vain & neurotic, I ran it by some friends. The shocked response made me fear that it was too ‘hot’. The world is hot enough with lies —

& anyway, it was the answer to MY question, no one else’s. Lest it become an effigy, & concrete slab, something material, separate from the living.

So evidently, yet again, the tree is wiser than me.

I would do well to trust the grain of wisdom & love in me it speaks to.

Haiku :

Vanity

Kills

~~Life~~

13.

I sang & poeted in public last night. I ‘smashed it’ as the Aussies like to say. But the experience left me shaken & miserable. I feel my performing days best behind me.

Haiku:

Great highs

Come with great lows

—The Buddhas ‘middle path’

14.

Haiku:

A dream of persecution

Woke me —

A singer poet’s sleep

15.

The tree doesn’t say much. No more than one thing each visit. Mind, I don’t stay long. There’s a grace period for a hug. But today it said something in its quiet, matter of fact way, that made me split my sides laughing:

Long Haiku

Me: “It’s confusing being a man.”

Tree: “I bet.”

Me: “ Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!...”

Man even once I’m home & have written this, I’m still laughing. It reminded me of my dearest friends Terry & his cousin, the late Mikey (RIP), when Terry had his laughing fit at Mikey’s quiet, matter of fact response to Terry’s long, long spiel:

Ha Ha

Cough cough

Cough

Ha Ha…!

It also reminded me of my late mother, Maureen, who taught me to hug trees — even though I eyerolled it as a teenager — “Why can’t you be NORMAL like the other mums?!”

Ha Ha

And some former students of mine on an excursion, who said “Can we go & hug a tree, Mr Doyle?”

In Fact, I wasn’t even hugging trees then — consciously. Once or twice perhaps, but I’d never really done it wholeheartedly. Too self conscious — another confusion of man.

Now that’s enough yacking!

All I wanted to say — & forgot — is that the tree & me are building a relationship with no destination in mind. In short, in good faith. Unpremeditated. What used to be called ‘it happened naturally.’

16.

Postscript

Of course,
All this has merely touched the surface of what is too precious and profound to utter.
I have listened better than I have written.
And the word I speak is “Assignation.”

Footnotes:

*Many Indigenous Calendars the world over are quite different from the Roman, bearing in mind that seasons are particular to place.

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Earth To Malachi (After Basho after a fashion)

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