Anyone who has died that I knew: I can feel their essence. Still here. It’s not a thought or a memory I am having. It’s a feeling. They are here, with me. They are abiding. My grandmothers, my grandfather, my dearest father. Even the boy who fell off a cliff when I was at school. … Continue reading
She looked so pretty in her blue jacket and shoes. Colours make me happy, she said. And you make me happy, I said. Or I wish that’s what I had said. All the colours have passed out of her now, like blue leaves drifting down from the trees. © Richard James Allen “Explosively powerful … Continue reading
For Chee and Stephen Who I was in the past, Who I will be in the future – What distractions these are From who I am now. Who I am now, Here, with you. In this moment, You have rewritten my past. You are rewriting my future. What I don’t understand about Who I was … Continue reading
of course the trees are my friends they are like me ~ busy busy bees growing in slow motion they embrace me when I enter the garden they remember that I water them they teach me how to be still they teach me how to be busy busy busy only very very slowly they teach … Continue reading
for Karen Your beauty cannot be translated, but I would fail not to try. It generates a weather no meteorology can describe. It is most like a flower, a flower with moods. An unstill life, in no need of arranging, it arranges itself. It is not fixed, so how can I fix it? It doesn’t … Continue reading
Richard James Allen was born in the New South Wales country town of Kempsey. He spent the first ten years of his life in Vietnam and Japan. Upon his return to Australia, he began writing diaries. Gradually the entries became less and less literal and more and more imaginative as he moved from recording to … Continue reading
Poem and Dish 