Live Encounters Poetry & Writing April 2025
Go tell the bees
téigh abair leis na beacha …*, poems by Linda Adair.
Go tell the bees
téigh abair leis na beacha …*
… what the news brings in to
our living rooms scenes of death
of people too often seen as
Not Us ::: Othered
dehumanised
demonised
dispossessed
expendable collateral sacrifices
buried in rubble by fear and egotism
how can we tell the bees
absolute power has no respect
for all the Othered people
beyond the meniscus of
colonisation’s pale thin skin
which saves itself no matter
the cost to others
why is it that a hive mind
would have more compassion
than democracy’s supposed best?
Go tell the bees
téigh abair leis na beacha
may they share the gold of peace
an alchemy of empathy between
this world and the beyond
— may their spirits harvest hope
and share it among lost olive trees.
*Gaeilge translation of the title Telling the bees is an old Celtic custom, that is particularly important when someone dies, or is born, or goes or comes, because if you don’t keep the bees informed they will fly away. Palestinians had been keeping bees for over 7000 years and the Israeli army had attacked the hives of this ancient industry in the occupied Westbank in the Hebron Hills even before October 2023..
Love letter of unceded lands
Between the amuse bouche
& first course
clouds obscured the woad profile
of Wiradjuri rangelands
near your family’s farm
mist enveloped the vineyard
before sunshine broke through
& we drank in the ever-changing view
as a young child
Dharug land cradled me
on the grassy swale of a filled-in well
below swaddling blue skies
until sunset etched into memory
the Great Dividing Range’s
indigo silhouette as
crimson transfused pearly clouds
then sunburnt skin would seethe
as cool southerlies swept the
unceded Cumberland Plain
— refuge from war and want for so many —
slivers of golden light pierced Caley’s Gap
to scuttle over cracked ’40s lino
in that weatherboard that felt so much like home
— before I learnt what it was to feel alone
books staunched that first taste of grief
wiser minds decoding mysterious feelings
created amazing vistas to my mind’s eye
until the lightning strike of adolescence hit
imbued me with a strange new confidence
not only in my mind, but my strengthening body.
As a young adult
Canada’s far horizons seduced
more than the chimera of a love
that palled so quickly
unlike the thalo blue peaks
indelible above the Strait of Georgia
one summer evening remains with me
though the hapless suitor was too easily forgotten
In inner city Sydney terrace houses
on Gadigal Land, I partied and laboured,
studied at night and worked by day
glutted on ideas art writing plays movies bands
amid the fake and the florid I was searching for real treasure
saw and conjured dreams
trying to find the words and schemes.
At the Performance Space
a feminist poet introduced us
we began collaborating on
poetry projects & human rights causes
review tickets to event openings & film screenings
bought us time to really know each other
as friends first then lovers who
now share a spirit of this special place
and a view to the timeless peaks that encircle
the Grose Valley.
Perpetual emotion
Our story is
implicated with motion
always resolutely place-less
the diaspora of selves
the channelling of others
driving always
going through
over or across
the topography
of once-upon-a-time joy
all those big dreams & then —
unforseen nightmares began
your suburban overload
Classic Hollywood escapism
crisp black and white became
technicolour carmine and a getaway car
you’d take refuge on the road
aspirational restless
things look better over an insect-streaked bonnet
a green nomad before it was fashionable
travelling toward perfection’s mirage
that existed in your imagination
scrounging
among the rusted coils of reality
for junkyard treasure
sometimes now I’ll drive
for the sake of going
under moonlight and alone
for the thrill of facing a windscreen full of sky
peacefully then I will wend my way home
aware the good times we shared
seldom happened in the family home.
We went places and did things
tinkering with cars or revamping vintage furniture
& played with our German Shepherd.
Linda Adair is a poet, publisher & co-editor of https://rochfordstreetreview.com living on Darug and Gundungarra Country. In 2020 Melbourne Poets Union published her debut book The Unintended Consequences of the Shattering. Her poems have been included in several Australian anthologies most recently in Oystercatcher One as well as various journals both in print and digitally locally and internationally. She featured at A Gallery of Poets at The Dickerson Gallery, La Mama Poetica, Poetry at the Pub, Cuplet, Don Banks, Reading the River, Back to Newnes Day, BigCi Open Day, Sonic Poetry Festivals in 2023 and 2024, as well as the launch readings at Newcastle Writers Festival and The Shop Gallery of To End All Wars in 2018.