Joe Dolce: Four Poems

Abbott’s Boobies

Papasula abbotti.

Endangered seabirds of Christmas Island.

White, with black eye patches, wings,

tails, marked flanks, blue webbed feet,

males have grey bills, females, pink,

in face-to-face courtship display, pairs mate for life.

Eggs weigh 10% of body weight,

incubated under both parents’ feet,  

who take turns, in shifts.

High risk of extinction,

from logging, phosphate mining— 

(to protect them, Environment Minister Garrett

refused an application for rainforest clearing.

In later tenure, Turnbull refused similar application,

squashed, by Federal Court, due to administrative bungle)—

not-to-forget the danger,

of pesky Yellow Crazy Ants,

large, yellow-orange scavenging predators,

long-legged, big eyes, no bite or sting,

formic acid spray subduing prey. “Crazy”

due to erratic movements when bothered.

On register of One Hundred of the World’s Worst Invasive Species,

dominant due to rabid aggression—

robber crabs, red crabs, and blue crabs wiped out.

Northern Territory super-colony infestation

extends 2,500 square kilometres, larger than the ACT.

Abbott’s Boobies live in colonies,

eat fish and squid,

madly vocal, with a plethora of cries.

Breeding in tall trees, adults rarely fight,

due to danger of falling out of branches;

once on ground, they starve,

unless, like planes, they locate

large strips, to catch wind.

Joe Dolce

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Cento

after David Strachan, The Sick Girl

 

How quiet it is in this sick room,

Beauty is sick, but sick in so fair guise,

Numb, stiff, broken by no sleep,

Or breaking—almost—with unspoken pain—

And while the dawn begins with slashing rain,

That I cry out for her to give me rest,

The wind plucks at a leaf.

Such hope, as is the sick despair of good,

Has found out thy bed.

There’s healing only in thy wings,

I, and faith, and hope, new-born,

On this sick youth, work your enchantments here!

 

Joe Dolce

 

Source poems:

Line 1. “Sick Room”, Langston Hughes

Line 2. Sonnet 101: “Stella is Sick”, Philip Sidney

Line 3. “Night Thoughts Over a Sick Child”, Philip Levine

Line 4. “How Sick—to Wait—in Any Place—but Thine”, Emily Dickinson

Line 5. “Sick Leave”, Siegfried Sassoon

Line 6. “By Now So Sick of Waiting”, Gaspara Stampa

Line 7. “June Sick Room”, Arthur Seymour John Tessimond

Line 8. Fragment: “Such Hope, as is the Sick Despair of Good”, Percy Bysshe Shelley

Line 9. “The Sick Rose”, William Blake

Line 10. “Home-Sick”, Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Line 11. “Hymn for a Sick Girl”, George MacDonald

Line 12. “To Music, to Becalm a Sweet Sick Youth”, Robert Herrick

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Knife Penny

Stir with a knife and stir up strife.
                                    —Anon 

Never close a knife if someone else has opened it.

Two knives crossed on an Irish table cause a quarrel.

Two knives crossed on an Italian table insult the Cross.

A knife crossed with a spoon indicates bad food—curse on the cook.

A knife in a cradle’s headboard guards the baby.

Black-handled knives under Grecian pillows keep away nightmares.

Bad luck to say the word knife while at sea.

Bad luck to buy a knife and not first cut wood or paper.

Bad fortune to sharpen a blade in Mississippi after sundown.

Bad omen to scour a butcher’s knife.

Good fortune to find a knife, no matter how useless and old—keep it.

A Russian knife lying sharp side up augurs the birth of a murderer.

A knife left lying on its back cuts an angel’s foot.

Playing with a Romanian knife causes an angel to flee.

Licking food off a Ukrainian knife makes you cruel and angry like a dog.

Sleeping above a Chinese knife scares away evil spirits.

Presenting a knife to a Japanese colleague suggests suicide.

Navajo knives are used only to cut, never to stab food, or as forks.

Dull knives, in Jamaican kitchens, indicate husband’s worthlessness in bed.

Touching oneself with a knife, in Madagascar, causes leprosy.

A knife in a jar of water wards off evil spirits afraid of reflections.

A knife given as a gift severs friendship—unless a coin is taped to the blade.

A combat knife placed back in its sheath before drawing blood will fail you in battle.

A Chinese knife that has slain a person is precious. 

You never truly own a knife until it has bitten you. 

Joe Dolce

 

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Saint Ælfgifu
for Dr Houston Dunleavy

If a blind man or a deaf worship at her tomb,
They are restored to health and prove the saint’s merits.
He who went there lame comes home firm of step,
The madman returns sane, rich in good sense.

William of Malmesbury (1125)

 

 

Queen Consort, concubina regis,

in 939, first wife of King Edmund the Magnificent,

(who was murdered by Leofa, the thief,

while attending mass in Pucklechurch).

Mother of two future kings,

Eadwig, and St Edgar the Peaceable

(the latter’s daughter, St Edith of Wilton,

regalis adelpha, conceived from an affair,

with a religious woman of noble birth,

whom Edgar stole from a nunnery— 

although bride abduction was traditional,

Edgar did penance, by not wearing his crown seven years).

St Ælfgifu’s name joined Old English

elements of elf and gift (she frequently gave

her expensive clothing to the poor).

Refounded the Royal Nunnery of Shaftesbury,

(a house connected with her mother, Wynflæd, a Vowess)

where her body is buried and enshrined.

 

Common ancestor to both Queen Elizabeth II

and Diana Spencer, Princess of Wales.

 

Joe Dolce

 

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