Kathy Kituai

Kathy Kituai

Kathy Kituai, diarist, editor, poet, creative writing teacher was founder and facilitator of the Limestone Tanka Poets is never happier than when working with other writers and artists. Apart from publishing two tanka collection with Amelia Fielden, she has published poetry with numerous poets, was awarded Arts ACT funding to work with a potter, Fergus Stewart, in Scotland to produce Deep in the Valley of Tea Bowls. Nitya Bernard Parker improvised music for their CD, The Heart Takes Wing. Composer, Rosemary Austin created a musical Script The Lacemaker, the poem Elizabeth Dalmon danced to at Tillies and The Fringe – South Australia Writing Festival. Kathy was an assistant editor for the Institute of PNG Studies, tanka ed- itor for Cattails, and Muse magazine, is published in Japan, Canada New Zealand, India, UK, USA and Australia, was president and vice president of The Fellowship of Writers, a host of Poetry Readings at Manning Clarke House, the Steering Committee for the Weereewa Lake George Arts Festi- val, and Arts ACT funding committee. She has judged literary competitions and co-judged the Sanford Goldstein International Tanka Competition. Accolades for her free-verse include CJ Dennis Award, St Kilda Literature Competition, Banjo Patterson Poetry Award (equal second), Somerset Po- etry Prize, (runner up), The Broadway Poetry Award (finalist), and she was awarded two ACT Critic awards for her teaching. Her tanka have also been successful in the Mainichi Japanese Tanka Award, Tea Towel Award (Re- sponses to the art of Otagaki Rengetsu), the Fuji Tanka Award, Eucalypt Scribbler’s Award and Ribbons People’s Choice Award.

Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow

Straggling into Winter

Hooked

Most mornings you are at the Dickson Wetlands, a man with a rod in hand, straw hat squatting on silver hair, wheelie parked safely at a distance. Why do we never talk? What do you hope to catch? Redfin or perch? I am told they’re seeded in the Molonglo River and drift downstream to these wetlands. Do you, like me, contemplate the way children who coast here in a pram, trawl the sky overhead, having no words for vastness and unimagined hues? Can you recall a time you skittled pebbles across a creek just to see how often they touched the water yet kept going? Will you reel in old ways of doing things once new to you as a lad, look fish you catch in the eye, hit them on the head before removing the hook? They say fish have too small a brain to contemplate anything, and never feel pain. Would your steps falter if you pondered on why fish writhe in ice buckets five hours before one last breath?

Dilemma

Lake Burley Griffin, Canberra

This is not the first kangaroo to vault a lake’s wall

and be engulfed in water nor the last to be prized

for its ability to rise

10 feet in the air

tail and hind legs a tripod keeping the balance

How to jump back again

Does the splash as kangaroos collapse,

whack against the wall?

Do shadows of the mob reflect in the lake

as they creep forward?

Does sunset grace their silhouettes

with cerise and golden rays

or do darker skies deepen

when members of their mob fall?

Someone must have loved the wall circumnavigating the lake

was proud of it, and rightly so

to be commissioned to build it

fifty years ago

A wall can only speak

of its purpose brick by brick

Kangaroos can only keep upright

if their hind legs are not hindered

We can only avoid drowning

in the futility of words

speak of cadaver

rootless as driftwood

observe their corpses

There is a move afoot

to renew Lake Burley Griffin’s wall

restore this barrier from wind

ensure pelicans, swans, and bush hens

are safe

This is not the first kangaroo

to vault a lake’s wall

and be engulfed in water.

Crimson Fur Flaring

Edinburgh, Scotland
I was steadfast about one or two things: loving foxes and poems …

– Mary Oliver

How I loved to run my four-year-old fingers over a figurine of a vixen
head resting on her forefeet
tail wrapped like a scarf around each paw

I didn’t know of their taste
for chickens back then
nor did I conceive how they dug under barb wired coops
to slaughter sleeping chicks
one blood-drenched hen dragged to the den

Today – urban pups
cavort over and under refurbished planks of wood
in metropolitan sites
the way skulks of old pranced across fallen branches of pine birch oaks in backwoods meadowland

TODAY – Vixens sit in the glooming crimson fur flaring tongues caressing tails and fragile chins of hungry pups as tenderly as any mother’s touch.

Confined to brick
and mortared city streets high rise buildings
car yards fast food stalls late night shopping malls what can wildlife hunt?