Dan Guenther: Two Poems
Humpbacks Heading Seaward into Deeper Water
A squall drives in over Botany Bay,
and a pod of whales heads seaward
while you watch from the window
overlooking your balcony,
still dwelling upon a season of choices
where things seldom went as planned.
What’s missing on this chilly day
is a trip to the pub
to ease the monotony,
that need to come together
with others of your kind to end the entropy
and warm the cold ennui:
A pair of flashy lorikeets intrude upon the quiet,
arriving for their daily handout
in the demanding way that they do,
while off Kurnell the white-caps turn into swells,
and dark shapes of humpbacks
break the surface.
Dan Guenther
Snow geese passing through the High Plains
A flight of migrating snow geese
calls down
through the April twilight.
You are following them northward along Route 85
toward that place where the big flocks rendezvous,
where every fall your grandfather
carried his reticence to a community coop
with buckets of apples.
During the day he snoozed in his orchards
between milking Holsteins,
and spent evenings home schooling seven kids.
He could dowse for water with an L-shaped rod,
and once spoke with an Archangel
while goose hunting near the Wyoming border:
Remember overhearing
that jealous uncle ridicule your grandmother
who believed in reincarnation,
and how she wept,
running off for a week to wander the backcountry?
Like the waterfowl in transit overhead
your grandparents lived in tune with a wilder spirit,
and were never quite one with the rest of us.
When asked by your children and grandchildren
best recall them both not for their shortcomings,
but for their example of hard work and independence,
and for the brutal beauty of things that they loved
about the high plains, including each other.
Dan Guenther
Madam: Archbishop Fisher (July-August 2024) does not resist the attacks on his church by the political, social or scientific atheists and those who insist on not being told what to do.
Aug 29 2024
6 mins
To claim Aborigines have the world's oldest continuous culture is to misunderstand the meaning of culture, which continuously changes over time and location. For a culture not to change over time would be a reproach and certainly not a cause for celebration, for it would indicate that there had been no capacity to adapt. Clearly this has not been the case
Aug 20 2024
23 mins
A friend and longtime supporter of Quadrant, Clive James sent us a poem in 2010, which we published in our December issue. Like the Taronga Park Aquarium he recalls in its 'mocked-up sandstone cave' it's not to be forgotten
Aug 16 2024
2 mins