buttoning my lips
against the Gestapo ---
mild censure
from the boss
morphed into nightmare

 
dark scallops
of sea to my right, sun-leached
sand to my left
... the reason
for poetry reasserts itself

is this the same
laneway I hurried along
yesterday?
crescent shaped, yellow leaves
lie across the path

 
the first chill
in the air since we met...
easy to forget
sultry hot summer nights
never last forever

 
what must it be like
to lose your home to flood
fire or cyclone?
broom mid-air, I hesitate
to sweep your web from the eaves

backpackers descend
on the beach near our house
a full moon party ---
we reach for our ear plugs
as the waves of music roll in

 
on my tree
I hang the crystal star
she bought
in a faraway land...
dancing light on dark branches

Fukushima
we learn to pronounce
from the news,
watching at a safe distance
... powerless to help you

 
jogging past me
a beautiful young thing
that was me
forty years ago
or was it yesterday

the crinkle
of autumn leaves —
Grandma’s smile

a crystal glass
on a granite bench —
no surprise
when it shatters …
still my sister dies too soon

GUSTS 12, Take 5 Volume 3

the old man
listens to his diagnosis
deciding
to plant an orchard
for his grandkids to harvest

reception breaking up a high plains sunset

k catcalls the wind blows them bac

misguided by ghost fungi I curse the crescent moon

a glass darkly waiting on the threshold

light at the end of the tunnel graffiti

ebbtide . . .
  the far blue horizon
    of my childhood

after the mynahs
the quietness
sinking in

the long road home
a barn owl briefly glimpsed
rides with me

winter fly
the many hidden eyes
of house spiders

dusk on the river the bunyip’s cold breath

Windfall Issue 4, January 2016

smoke haze
over the cathedral
our prayers for rain

HUMAN/KIND, Issue 2.1, March 2020

scattering
mum’s ashes
fiery sunset

lawn sprinkler
a little girl dances
through rainbows

icy puddle
all the cracks
in the clouds

retreating shadows
a golden orb spider
spins sunlight

the stone Buddha’s
serene smile
cactus garden

remembering dad
the little boy cowers
behind a headstone

vacuuming fruit flies my karmic overload

Human/Kind, May 2019

is it really mine
this fortune from the cookie?
'sweet success
will follow many hardships' 
no sign of where I'm at

 
on this beach
waves wash in, wash out
leaving flotsam...
now her empty hallway
a stack of packed boxes

yellow buckets
on the ferris wheel rust
in a field of grass...
not even a bird call
in this Chernobyl wasteland

 
in the market-place
a pile of red chillies
catches the light ---
the blush on my cheeks
when your eyes meet mine

 
two brilliant stars...
Blake's words 'tiger, tiger
burning bright'
stalk my mind
as I toss and turn

'friends for lunch' ---
not cannibalism,
simply barbeque
with a few beers
and lots of chat

this potato peeler
my mother used
skins my knuckle too

Nick Virgilio Writers House Poetry: Haiku, Senryu and Tanka, Volume 1, 2019, page 28

one day at a time one day a daylily

under spiderlight long gone her song

poste restante stubble fields of broken stone

double exposure held back from the brink

around me echolalia i dream corpses

spring breezes
through my kitchen window
first cabbage white

forest sunrise
a shrike-thrush
polishes day songs

hurricane path
a meandering line
of loaded trolleys

fleeting romance
her worn-down lipstick
deep in his glove box