Nana Ollerenshaw

 

AFTER THE STORM

Waves calve the sand
like polar cliffs.
A man and his son
are waist high
bearing the brunt,
their towels limp on the fence.
Something has brought them here
some wish to be part of wildness
and early morning
allowing the surge to knock them
stun them with its force.
They are alone,
the monotony of being safe,
the comforts and habits of home,
well meaning advice,
forgotten.
It doesn't matter that the boy's togs have torn,
that he is shivering
that his dad's late for work
or if they catch a cold.
They are together in mountains of water,
more alive than anyone.

CP

Nana Ollerenshaw grew up in Connecticut, married an Australian, and moved to Australia in 1965. She changed from school teaching to nursing in 1988, and currently lives in Buderim on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland.

Nana Ollerenshaw

Lorraine

Here, truth counts.
Sight measures the lonely course
from where she's come:
bones and hollows, sallow skin,
the ribcage of a bird.
Her mind, however, keeps its hold
guiding fragile friends
with more than manners.
She shares their shocked surprise,
the haste with which she's changed.
We meet now in the bedroom.
She seeks the closeness of another body
prolonging warmth against such solid flesh
but watches with precision
the drama of her transformation,
an accountant keeping track
of all that she has loved
in columns,
counting down.

CP

Nana Ollerenshaw grew up in Connecticut, married an Australian, and moved to Australia in 1965. She changed from school teaching to nursing in 1988, and currently lives in Buderim on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland.

Nana Ollerenshaw

ANAESTHESIA

Anaesthesia
sleep of disbelief:
I am and I am not,
a space unlived, not time
with sense of passing, but part of
two eternities on either side of being.
Conscious now, I wait for what has finished
unconvinced the act is done,
life turned off and on,
not normal sleep
where dreams
queer with logic, run.

CP

Nana Ollerenshaw grew up in Connecticut, married an Australian, and moved to Australia in 1965. She changed from school teaching to nursing in 1988, and currently lives in Buderim on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland.

Nana Ollerenshaw

WASHED UP

Everyone is staring at
the fishing boat washed up,
the bobcat, pumps and tug
waiting for high tide to pull it off.
Crowds can't know
the unexpected force that
washed the deckhand overboard.
His mates asleep below
could not have heard his cries,
the cold, the water's choke,
terror of what lies beneath,
unable to get back or even near
the cliffs of wooden planking,
fear, hoarse from shouting
seeing hope drift further
from the boat, alone
beyond a reach.

CP

Nana Ollerenshaw grew up in Connecticut, married an Australian, and moved to Australia in 1965. She changed from school teaching to nursing in 1988, and currently lives in Buderim on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland.

Nana Ollerenshaw

EMAIL CORRESPONDENCE

We correspond by word
where every thought's an edit
to design an image of ourselves.
Distance brings us close.
Bodies do not intervene
or others' views
or daily living's linen
slow the romance of our heads
the mystery of face.

CP

Nana Ollerenshaw grew up in Connecticut, married an Australian, and moved to Australia in 1965. She changed from school teaching to nursing in 1988, and currently lives in Buderim on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland.

Nana Ollerenshaw

—Photo by Philippe Noret

VA 777 – 300

Sleek
a mammoth dorsal fin,
laterals wing back to lift
a fuselage that narrows to a cone,
tiny unkind eyes and pointed nose
sharp enough to split and ease
the space it lives in
when it isn’t beached at gate
empty of its people,
still with the stillness
of having run the distance.
But its soul—a maw louder
than all lions with one throat,
cavernous with awful atom-splitting power,
sweeps freight past continents and seas,
indifferently.
If metal has a soul
it would be a soul to match
the menacing of cloud outside the porthole
the broad unearthly scape
of emptiness
beyond the thin divide.

CP

Nana Ollerenshaw grew up in Connecticut, married an Australian, and moved to Australia in 1965. She changed from school teaching to nursing in 1988, and currently lives in Buderim on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland.

Nana Ollerenshaw

ON THE TRAPPING OF MINERS AT BEACONSFIELD APRIL 2006

Time has lost the day
to tell it what to do,
lost the night for sleep.
A kilometer deep
they hear the roar
that splits their lives in two
drowned in rock,
emboweled, all for gold.
How can profit matter now.
Sky and sun are dreams
they dreamed at birth,
blue and green a myth,
hope, a scratching.
Time is measured
by the length of fear,
by reconciliation in too short
a breath with death
grown fat with stone.
And if an outside chance should save them,
should drill them from their end
they will be changed.

CP

Nana Ollerenshaw grew up in Connecticut, married an Australian, and moved to Australia in 1965. She changed from school teaching to nursing in 1988, and currently lives in Buderim on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland.

Nana Ollerenshaw

DRIVING TO LAWN HILL

Out here the highway starts with reassurance
but soon will dump its drivers on rough dirt,
washboard roads to unfenced silence,
an aftermath of dust.
Passing drivers lift a finger
knowing this red country can
destroy, a landscape simplified
to sky, earth, air and fire
but no water—the braided rivers run with sand.
The road leads on deeper into myth
towards fear in bareness, heat,
flat in all the compass points
so when a destination comes,
presents a campground, toilets, gorge,
the green of hidden water, palms,
a tiny spill of people, who've also driven here,
it's like redemption.

CP

Nana Ollerenshaw grew up in Connecticut, married an Australian and moved to Australia in 1965. She changed from school teaching to nursing in 1988, and currently lives in Buderim on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland.

Nana Ollerenshaw

—Photo from Google Images

XAVIER RUDD IN CONCERT

The blond haired feral god ascended.
The crowd roared
before his sound could drown them,
whistled, screamed, chanted
orisons in homage with one throat.
Give it, give it, give it
baby give it, and he gave,
a cave man in the altar of his instruments,
the stomp box kitchen of guitar,
cymbal, drum, harmonica
growl, thunder, bark,
the grieving roll and wail of hollowed log.
To this apocalypse
she moved, sinuous with longing
arms outstretched
an ancient pelvic tilt
the body doing what it craved
old as stones or clacking sticks.

CP

Nana Ollerenshaw grew up in Connecticut, married an Australian, and moved to Australia in 1965. She changed from school teaching to nursing in 1988, and currently lives in Buderim on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland.

Nana Ollerenshaw

FINDING A SUBJECT FOR POETRY

You hear it, as you
glance over your shoulder
while talking to someone,
see it approach
and fondle your cheek.

When you are driving
it makes you careless.
It catches you
while you are eating a sandwich.

It likes to move in your skull
teasing you with
all the ways
it can be delivered
onto your page. It disappoints.

It reminds you of itself.
You can't medicate
against it. Sometimes you feel closer
to it in your dreams.
You fall in love with it
even if it's ugly
but you fear it.
You know its power
to possess.

CP

Nana Ollerenshaw grew up in Connecticut, married an Australian, and moved to Australia in 1965. She changed from school teaching to nursing in 1988, and currently lives in Buderim on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland.

Nana Ollerenshaw

DEPARTURE LOUNGE

Saying goodbye is sad.
There is death in it.
Who knows what will happen
between now and when we meet again,
even tomorrow.
It's our separation
the interruption of our ritual of being together,
our animal closeness in bed
if we are lovers.
It is the knowledge of days behind us
longer than days before us
remembering ourselves as we were
and as we may become.
So many people are saying goodbye
here in the departure lounge
as if their heart were in it
as if they knew how short life is
as if it were their last chance.

CP

Nana Ollerenshaw grew up in Connecticut, married an Australian, and moved to Australia in 1965. She changed from school teaching to nursing in 1988, and currently lives in Buderim on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland.

THE DAY THE SKY FELL
Nana Ollerenshaw

It fell from nowhere,
cracked Bombala's heated afternoon with sound
and brought the sky
down to lie along the ground.
The massive trunk and branches
sprawled across a mangled fence,
bridged the play pit toys next door
to fill the neighbour's yard
with unexpected heaven wood.
The mass of limbs,
the spare green leaves, bark nests
amid this mighty flesh,
this huge and white untidiness
is fodder now for chainsaw,
proof that Chicken Little had a point.
The tree has given back
its space to air.
But no one dares to think
what might have been
had we been playing there
in just that tip of time and place
as we had been so soon before.

CP

Nana Ollerenshaw grew up in Connecticut, married an Australian, and moved to Australia in 1965. She changed from school teaching to nursing in 1988, and currently lives in Buderim on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland.

LOSING MY MOTHER
Nana Ollerenshaw

The worst
is not her anger
bad enough
or even her confusion
sad
not pain
but her not knowing
what she used
to love.
No words
for one who lived
and sang them.
The blank face
the silence
all that once described her
gone.
And when she's somewhere else
at last responding
it's not here
with me
but in some darker place.

CP

Nana Ollerenshaw grew up in Connecticut, married an Australian, and moved to Australia in 1965. She changed from school teaching to nursing in 1988, and currently lives in Buderim on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland.