SPRING IN SYDNEY

“I love spring anywhere, but if I could choose I would always greet it in a garden.” - Ruth Stout

I am in Sydney again for work and take the opportunity of a delayed flight and some spare time in an airport waiting lounge, to bring you my Poetry Wednesday offering early today. Spring has sprung in the Antipodes and the powder blue skies of Sydney are dotted with fleecy clouds – we may have a shower or two today. What better way to celebrate an Australian Spring than with some Australian poetry (a month early in this particular example, but a poem I like, nevertheless).

Mallee* in October

When clear October suns unfold
mallee tips of red and gold

children on their way to school
discover tadpoles in a pool,

iceplants sheathed in beaded glass
spider orchids and shivery grass,

webs with globes of dew alight
budgerigars on their first flight,

tottery lambs and a stilty foal
a papers slough that a snake shed whole,

and a bronzewing's nest of twigs so few
that both the sky and the eggs show through.
Flexmore Hudson

*mallee |ˈmalē| noun
A low-growing bushy Australian eucalyptus that typically has several slender stems.
• Genus Eucalyptus, family Myrtaceae: several species, in particular E. dumosa.
• scrub that is dominated by mallee bushes, typical of some arid parts of Australia.
ORIGIN mid 19th century, from Wuywurung (an Aboriginal language).
Flexmore Hudson (1913-1988) was born in Charters Towers Queensland. He was educated at Adelaide High School and graduated from the University of Adelaide. He began a teaching career in 1934 and taught in the Mallee, and at Scotch College in Adelaide and Adelaide Boys' High School. During the period 1941 to 1947 Hudson founded, edited and published the literary journal, “Poetry”. He also edited the 1943 anthology of Australian verse for Jindyworobak and contributed to the Jindyworobak anthologies from 1938 to 1953. He died in South Australia on 4th May 1988.

Some of the inspiration for his poetry came from his pupils. Whilst teaching at a small school (14 pupils) in the Mallee district of South Australia, the children would tell him of the things they had seen on the way to school. In his poem Mallee in October he refers to the Bronzewing's nest. Quote: "One day I spotted a bronzewing sitting on her eggs, Every morning for about a fortnight I used to stop my bike almost under the nest and watch that bird. I remember how pleased I was that, after a few days, she tolerated my intrusion." taken from This Land - an anthology of Australian Poetry by M.M. Flynn and J. Groom published 1968.