POW Memorial, Sandakan, Borneo.

There is a dark grove of trees on the hill

of Sandakan,

where the prisoners finished their lives,

or began to finish them

in unspeakable ways,

no gentle deaths allowed.

The powerful ones showed

such ingenuity in torture.

How to slowly crucify.

How to punish the body

with heat and starvation

before merciless death.

The men were brave,

the survivors said,

when ulcers ate their legs,

perhaps a whimper or two.

The jungle took their bodies.

Felt hats decaying in the undergrowth.

Then the death marches,

to finish them off in Ranau

under the shadow of Mount Kinabalu.

The barely-alive still hoping, somehow,

before the final shots from

men obeying orders.

This story has many variations

on war’s hills and valleys.

What are the questions

for captive and captor?

Both answers hide within us, waiting

for history’s awakening.

The Pilgrim Road to Santiago

(For Nerma)   

I met a young girl

on the road to

Santiago de Compostela

when the journey was nearly done.

Her load she bore lightly

as she shortened her pace for mine.

I am not a man,

but when the day comes,

for counting the memories

I will recall her beauty.

What gift could be given

along the way, taking each step

closer to Santiago’s gleaming city?

The spires there heavy with ancient meaning,

stone angels in perpetual

supplication and holy desire.

What could I say of life?

There were things I could have said,

but was I able to tell her

what I could not tell myself?

Walking as the dawn broke behind us

I thought to open her eyes

to the magpie’s call

in the dark cathedral of the morning.

Will you be sorry at the end

for the goal we wish for?

But it is not the end, she said.

She showed me the stones

that she carried, each one

fitting the palm of her hands.

What could I tell her?

The vines touched with gold

with September’s chill,

dogs howling at our passing.

And when she was gone

with her swift tread

my heart ached

with the sweetness of life.

Maybe what I sought

had travelled with us.

The gift had been given.

My Father

He does not listen any more, my Father,

when I phone him from across the world,

same day, same time every week.

His words carry a message he will not speak.

I cannot answer, for what can I offer?

I would like to say that I will be here

to listen again, to believe the past;

stories of old worlds he lived through,

for the present is a confusion.

His eye’s centre has disappeared,

slipped away, blanked out from overuse.

He has seen too much in the tropical suns.

Words I have heard before keep flowing,

as I listen to his breath, 
the heart beneath

and the life,
more precious than I can say.

The Emu Eggs

We climbed the desert mountain,

bush walkers, past pride of youth.

Private journeys across the cliffs

burdened with pain of body and soul,

our backs to the vastness,

mutely we challenged the red rock.

Suddenly, the plateau, beneath the sky.

Nothing else, nothing above.

A lightness of the air, such beauty

surrounded by the expanse.

A view uncontained, layers of blue and purple.

Far below, the bed of an ancient sea.

And there now at our feet, more wonder still.

An emu’s nest, full and round bearing seven eggs.

Here distilled, the colour of tropical seas,

the high wind of the callitris.

A gift beyond expectation,

a journey transformed.

©Anne Chappel

The Ethiopian Coptic Cross

(made from old bullet cases)

Bullet cases from the Sahara,

poor brass discarded

in the shifting sands

from forgotten wars,

one tribe settling

scores of ancient hate

till all memory is lost

of the original sin.

New sins blossom,

the only flowers

in a land where

starving goats hunt

last year’s pods

under dead trees,

and a boy child

watching the hills

balances a rifle

across his knees.

The old man hammers

out of the bullets

holy crosses

whose patterns

hold hands in a

splendour of promise.

©Anne Chappel

The Shell Collection

Before she died, my friend returned

her shell collection to the sea.

It was where they belonged, she said,

where they gleam brightest.

These are their remains

that in death make a beach.

Caressed by waves, pounded by storms,

marked by tides,

sorted and resorted by shape and size,

part of earth’s pattern in every day’s

new arrangement.

The tide turns and pauses

like a breath, out and in,

then the sigh,

the wait of a moment,

the choice of life rather than death.

And so I remember her.

When I walk the sea’s edge

and stop before a shell,

whose shape and form,

like some treasure dazzles me,

I pass by, letting the earth claim her own.

©Anne Chappel 

Argonaut Sea Gift

Have you ever found a nautilus shell?

On the beach, gleaming

amongst the dark sea wrack

each whorl, curve, indentation

a perfect creation.

Strange traveller of the ocean depths,

part bird, part hero of ancient times.

Home of a fearsome protector

whose lidless eyes saw other worlds

in a journey beyond our imagination.

Now stranded here, a sublime gift.

Fragile perfection borne through the blue

to death on the bright shore.

If god lives, this is his work,

no better could we do.

©Anne Chappel