Russ met his wife-to-be, Diane, at high  school in Townsville. She would become the love of his life and his writing muse for the next five decades, a story captured in love poems.

​You are a flower of the renaissance
Bursting with the colours of excited newness
Of ideas of visions and incantations of
The hiding places of human worth
That you long to bring forth and serve.
 
Yet it is the moon that is your measure.
The silent galactic disc aloft in the darkness
Claiming every continent and island.
This benign mover of tides
Changer of moods
Reflector of the great sun
Thrower of shadows and pathways into the night
Freely recognises another spirit unfettered.
 
But neither the moon nor its deities know
The dimensions of your passion.

Whatever the day
I’m missing you
So many things remind me of you
The sun, the rain
Especially the moon
 
When I look at plants
 
Going to sleep, I miss your calming warmth
When I wake I miss you wanting to sleep in
 
Leaving home I miss you
drinking tea in the car
going home I miss you running late
I even miss waiting
And driving fast
In a rush
“flight boarding”
 
Feeling you loving the house
You work so hard on
And enjoy being in
 
Your face when you say
you have bought a dress
with a cost that somehow needs my approval
 
when the weekend’s over
I miss you saying there’s work not done
Inventing ways to call into the plant shop
Just one minute
Just one thing to buy
And a trolley load later
We can leave
 
You call me yesterday’s man
It seems so apt
I can’t help laughing
 
I miss your cheeky face
And simple things like complaints that clothes don’t fit
Fill this place and my mind with a need for you
 
Just looking at you is such a pleasure
I miss you badly
 
Sharing with you is what my life is about
Like your excitement at hearing from the boys
Or finding we think the same about something special
                                                                                                       
​Even the things that make us innately different
Like your passion
for a tidy house                                                                                   
or the need to pay bills.
 
When you come back I will miss you again
The minute I am away from you.

I met a man today and that meeting will remain with me for a long time. His name was Ricky, but that’s not his full name. He told me his full name but it was a rhythmic flow of syllables strange to my ear and too hard for me to grasp and remember. Ricky is from India and as well as being my taxi driver, I discovered he was a poet. And not just an ordinary poet, if there is such a thing. He is a Punjabi poet, a man of the Punjab in the far northern part of his country who expresses his deepest feelings in that ancient language of the subcontinent from which so much wisdom and strife and fine writing has flowed through thousands of years of human history.
 
It was while he was at school that Ricky started writing, at home, privately, in secret. He could not bring himself to tell anyone apart from a few close and trusted friends. As he got older, he became less inhibited and is now about to publish his first book. When I told him I was finishing a novel it seemed to bond us in a warm and personal way.
 
In answer to my questions, he explained there were no particular rules in the poetry of his language. It was what we would call in English, free verse. And there was no limit on subject matter, so he had written on everything from nature to politics and relationships. As we made our way through Brisbane’s busy morning traffic, we reached a point where it seemed Ricky had no wish to go on talking about his poetry. His English was fine but it still took second place to Punjabi and I felt he was struggling and frustrated, trying to explain in a second language the sweep and passion of his mother tongue. But he remained warm and friendly and was happy to talk about the difficulties of staying connected with family when he was in another country. He asked about the reason for my visit to the hospital and I gave him a brief outline of my medical drama.
 
As my journey came to an end, he handed me his card and number to call him when I needed to go home. On the return journey I had questions that had come to me in the hours in between. His answers were polite but brief. The writers he admired in his language were the ones who chose to support positive values; to support the good and honest people in the eternal struggle against the bad and dishonest ones. On that we had another point of bonding. We also discovered that for both of us, writing was a necessity of life; it was something we just had to do. It was a gift we had been given by God. We agreed it was a source of endless pleasure and as necessary as breathing. Before I got out of his cab, I thanked him for his kindness and told him it had been a great privilege to have been driven to and from my appointment by a Punjabi poet. He offered me a smile that was full of appreciation and completely free of ego. We both hoped we would meet again.
 
 
Russ Morgan
25th October 2019

MACONDO
WET TROPICS
RUSS AT WORK ON DECK

On the day when I came to you with my bicycle, the one with its frame bent to the point where its wheels could not turn because someone had backed their car into it while I was at the Saturday afternoon movies, on that day when you came out of your shop saying ‘What’s the matter mate?’ took the bike, studied the problem, put it on the ground and then stood on it with your full weight to perform a miracle before my eyes that allowed the wheels to turn again, on that day …did you hold in your head and your heart the time you were gassed in the trenches in Flanders?

On that day, when you took my precious bike in your strong hands and performed your miracle were you able to remember another day long before I was born when you joined up, at the age of 20, to fight for your country and were assigned to ‘C’ company of the 41st Infantry Battalion of the Australian Imperial Force on January 3rd 1916? Could you recall how proud you were, Private William James Clifford, with your young mates, lining up your field equipment for inspection in Bells Field in Brisbane before boarding the HMAT Demosthenes in Sydney in May to sail for Europe?
​
And when I told you nearly half a century later that I was learning German and you let fly with a string of words you had picked up while guarding POWs, why did you laugh out loud and shake your head when I wanted you to repeat them so that I could write them down and discuss them with my teacher?

And were those lines on your kindly face deepened with the arrival of another war and the news that your son, my Uncle Bert, had been in Singapore when it fell and was being held in Changii? And were there tears when you received a letter from him written just before the fall telling you and Nana how well things were going?
​
And why were you never among the men in blue surge suits bedecked in medals who marched through the streets of Innisfail, our home town, on Anzac day? Did it have something to do with the time my Uncle Bill took you to the War Memorial in Canberra, to the realistically reconstructed trenches of your war and you lasted only a few minutes before you broke down and had to be helped out?

And did you know how proud I was, how proud we all were when they draped your coffin in the Australian flag as we said our last farewells?

These thoughts roll through my head as I watch my grandchildren, answer their questions and hope for the same grace my grandfather had....
 
 
Russ Morgan

​Down by this mirrored morning
Where silver lines the sea
Where waves can find in ancient rocks
Time’s mortal reverie,
The ocean bares its tidal breast
And opens up its soul
With rocky scars and darkened pools
Like secrets never told.
 
Down by this patient surface
Past the miracle of light,
Like corners in a lifetime
That struggle in the night
Falls a shadow in the turning
With a flick’ring hint of peace,
And the wind is sadly singing
Of the turbulence beneath.
 
 Russ Morgan                     
Shorncliffe 2003

(Written while on a bus)
 
They come and flash
​Beside your tragedy
Humming as if sent by
Nature to be of help.
 
Past help, they stay,
Hovering in slow mockery
Of life passed over.
 
Throbbing in the pierced
Darkness when pulsing has
Ceased and all meaning
Ended.
 
Russ Morgan
London  1984