January meeting preamble and poem

Pre-amble

Our Fathers who part at eleven

Allow me this quatrain

Our income’s come

Our fill be done in mirth

As it is from seven

Live verse this day so gaily read

And forgive us our mess’d verses

As we forgive those press verse against us

And lead us not into prosation

But deliver us from drivel

Though mine is just dinkum

The hour, and the story

As ever. A river..

 

Life is like a River

This life is like a river

A silver shiver this life

A gurgling-guddling quick’ning sliver

Wrangling-tangle of strife

 

All we be is water-taught

Aught but water our withal

Our tumbling jumbling ripple of thought

Pride before a waterfall

 

Strong brown God is the river

Reiver of sods and odds thrown

Our brownian drownian motion a-quiver

Deep pooled in tides of its own

 

Our day is like a lifetime

Wild thyme and strawberry day

But frighteningly nightly tight-coiling the lifeline

Which runs through death and decay

 

Well the still point of the world

Whirled without end to be well

For waving and curling dimensions unfurled

Love which is ocean’s salt swell