These poems are dedicated to Sue,

Richard and Marylyn, Stephen and Karen, Chris and Kirsty,

and to all their children.

        Thank you, Joan Loudon, for your University of the Third Age Writing Workshop classes and for the ideas that led to many of these poems. Thanks to the Hobart branch of the Fellowship of Australian Writers for the many 100-word and other competitions and to you, Yvonne Stadler for your 100-word booklets and your encouragement. 

        Special thanks go to the forests of Tasmania for my career, my wooden home, the paper for this book and the bountiful supply of so many things I use every day: to the forest fires that have kept me searching, fascinated and poetically inclined for more than sixty years, and to my share of Summerleas Pine plantation, the logging of which provided the bridging finance for the publication of this small volume.

Kaleidoscope of Life

With rhyme and rhythm this book is packed

with flights of fancy, fun and fact

on Nature’s ways and those of Man.

The space we fill, the times we span,

exploits in spent and misspent youth,

our loves, our fights, our search for truth.

What we believe, what we’ll correct.

Old age and what we recollect.

Our thoughts on death and what’s to know

when we’re recycled, where will we go?

Conversation with Les Murray

“When browsing through the Penguin Book of

Modern Australian Poetry, I saw that some of

 your poems were among the very few that

 rhymed. Why is this so?”

Les just laughed and said, “Fashions change,

rhyme could easily come back into popularity.”

When I asked him how a poet could assess his

own work, Les said, “Just keep writing, let

nothing stop you. You’ll soon see where earlier

poems need improving and how to do it.”