Not even slush

December 27, 2025December 27, 2025 | Belinda Broughton

The caterpillar spins a cocoon
with the material of its own body,
an armour made with spit,
completely encased,
world out there, caterpillar within.
And then it becomes soup
dissolves into slush,
completely unmade, except for
the knowledge that forms itself
out of the formlessness
into a butterfly, and even then,
a strange soft angular being that
eventually breaks from its armour
knowing that this air that it breathes
must be pushed into
these strange unfolding shapes.
Wings! Suddenly it has wings.
Forget the beauty for a moment
(though that is grand.)
Wings! They catch air.
They use the very substance of air
the very substance (!) of air to fly.
Look! It flies.

Presently, despite hope, I’m not even slush
because, try as I might, I cannot
spit forth a cocoon.

*Yeah, it’s a millipede. Nothing remotely butterfly-like about a millipede.*

Night to Dawn

April 21, 2025April 21, 2025 | Belinda Broughton

I lay myself down on pillows
in the softness of the darkness
and sleep. Meanwhile the night
works it’s healing on my body,
rest, recuperation, the re-organisation
of my molecules.
My mind drifts to the great above,
the night sky, endless space with stars

endless space with stars, those glittering suns
speckled like sand grains across the void.

The void, space, the beauty of calm,
the calm of beauty, the way of beauty becoming
beauty again: above, below, beside, behind,
beauty all around.

All around the softness of softness, womb like.
The primordial abundance and integrity
that re-incubates with the dawn.

Dawn’s loveliness after a night of
good sleep informed by dreams,
the restoration of body and mind.

I take up my drum. I beat the heartbeat.
I beat the heartbeat of infant in womb.
I beat the waking day.
I beat the promise of night.
I beat the sorrow of endings, of transformation, of birth and rebirth.

I beat the drum. I beat the drum.

Things done and not done

March 7, 2025July 29, 2025 | Belinda Broughton

I haven’t been to Antarctica
haven’t stood on the blue world with
the hardness of liquid underfoot
wind like nerves wind like nerves
nose so cold that there is no scent
some fear of the otherness of the world
a brittle fragility.
I haven’t scaled iced peaks with pick-axes and ropes
or put my body into the vice of terror and effort.

I have nestled a new-born on my belly
felt the animal of it
crawl to my breast and latch on
my body forgotten in the fascination
of meeting this unknown one
and joined suddenly to all mothers
to the animal of the human
to the humanity of love and to
the fierce animal protection of mother wolf
that was rising in my spine.

I haven’t done most of the things
that I dreamt of when I was a dreamer
but I have done a lot of things
that I never knew I would need to do
and I have excelled.
I have also failed time and time again
and tried time and time again.

And I am here at this time of life
surviving each day
tending the humanity of my husband’s needs
and tending the humanity of this
small fragile vital brave and undaunted self.

Five Years On

December 20, 2024December 20, 2024 | Belinda Broughton

Untitled poem on the fifth anniversary of total loss to bushfires

The afternoon sunshine
slants across the hill
writing shadows

There is such beauty
in the skeletons
of trees

Five years ago
fire
took their lives

Now
they host the lives
of a million

It is hard actually
to put the past
behind you

But again
nature reminds me
there is no choice

On the far hill
cattle graze
their minds full of grass

My mind
is so full
of trouble

I wish it was
full
of grass

So five years. I’m not the only one damaged. Firefighters, emergency workers, disaster personnel, everyday locals, etc.

But we are all just getting on with it.

Apparently.

I remember several years after Dad died, Mum saying, ‘One day I heard myself laugh, and then I knew I was getting better.’

Well, I’ve been laughing all the way through this. Some very dark humour. Also crying. Which is healthy.

Apparently.

And I have found much delight. Nature and people.

Anyway one can hardly compare loss of this kind to the loss of a loved one, even though it is grief.

Apparently.

Really it is trauma.

But we are all just getting on with it.

And I, personally, greedily seek delight…

Phooey : Karma

November 27, 2024November 28, 2024 | Belinda Broughton

When my son got brain cancer and was dying, he ventured to me that, perhaps, it was because he had done something bad that he had cancer. ‘Karma,’ he said.

Now my darling husband has dementia though he is still very aware. Even so, he says he feels worthless because he can’t do much and because somewhere on the web he read that he must’ve done something bad to have dementia. ‘Karma,’ he says.

These very cool statements I write here do not show the rage that I feel. How dare people? How dare they tell these two beautiful men that they caused their own demise? What the hell is wrong with just accepting that shit happens. Bodies get old and die, sometimes the brain dies before the body. Or an errant cell begins to divide in the beautiful brain of my son.

Between the Christian idea of retribution and the Eastern idea of karma (at least how Westerners present it), I can’t see much difference. It’s torture. It’s abuse.

I can tell you that my sweet darlings do not ‘deserve’ it. Good men, both of them. But it wouldn’t matter if they weren’t, it’s still a shit idea.

This is the only photo I can find of them together. The little one is saying, ‘What are you doing with my feet, Nagypapa?’

In difficult times, touch

November 7, 2024December 4, 2024 | Belinda Broughton

The day the towers came down

I went and bought a yiros.

The yiros lady held my hand when

she put in the change.

We needed touch that day.

This is another day

and I hold your hand, dear stranger,

that we may know our shared humanity,

that we may remember that, in reality

there is nothing to us, actually,

except love.

A little context for the future: When I posted this, it was the day after the American election when it was obvious who had won. All of the left wing and diverse people that I love to know, American and otherwise, were distraught. It felt, still feels, like a slap in the face for at least half, probably more, of the population.

When the people of Australia voted against giving a voice in parliament to our First Nations’ people, for no reason other than to better their lives, it felt like this. Bewildering.

Dear People, take heart. Eventually there will be a movement towards inclusion and justice.

Of Hills and Valleys

October 30, 2024 | Belinda Broughton

The hills are steep and I climb them.
The work of that wears me thin.
Even downhill is hard on the knees.

Water tumbles with urgency
or flows with persistence.
It gathers in low places.

I also move as if ruled
by gravity and gravity
has multiple meanings, of course.

But so does pooling in low places.
So does calmness
and rest.

In water that has rushed down mountains,
mud settles, and from it grows
the lotus.

Almost a Love Poem

October 7, 2024October 7, 2024 | Belinda Broughton

My love, I haven’t written a love poem
for too long a time. Never mind, we’ve been
living it after all, so many days and nights filled
with the knowing of each other. Poems are short
and mostly yearning, but we are writing a book.

Lately, it’s wound dressings and painkillers
as we tend our bodies and their complaints.
But you must know that I still
glance over my book at you and am content.
Your presence like a cup of tea, known and homely.

I missed you when you were in hospital.
The house was far bigger than I needed,
empty and a bit cold, but known, like your body.
My feet knew their way in the dark.
In bed, I hugged a pillow, in lieu of you.

What will happen now my love? The pages of life
keep turning. I’d like a happy ending or at least
a peaceful one, the sort that, when you close the book
and place it on the table, you give a little sigh and sit back,
then gaze around as if everything was new.

I have a number of poems about my partner and our life in this odd time of it. Let’s say, time is limited, and with his consent I will share some of the poems from this period. They are of this time and need to be shared now as it will get difficult later. This is around the time of the beginning of it. Written in January, it was written after his hip replacement and before he got an infection in the wound, leading to two further operations, both under general anaesthetic.