Friday, July 15, 2016

New Poetry by James Walton










Ludwig’s Riff

Unlike my desk or room and bookcases
the garage is a mess that hides things.
The extra set of screw drivers
handles eaten by rats. That ball of twine,
now I have a baker’s dozen.
I never left the fencing pliers by the one inch
joiners in that box. Surely something else,
an incantation a spatial anomaly lingers.

Like the feeling when a song comes back
from where ever it’s been. Sound waves
catch in skin unaware with ankles tuning
in the foreshore. Played while doing the dishes,
out they go. Circling like birds of prey,
waiting for the side way look. Distraction
lets them in again, humming, mouthing words
lost until they re-admit themselves.

Though Beethoven’s hearing left before him
Moonlight Sonata roams the stars,
arcs of never received light race ahead of chatter
mixed with all the transmissions, the spilled tea
of radio plays, Lear in defiant wandering.
Somewhere a comet streak meanders over chords,
an intersect of time and space reconciled
by the first alert of introductory notes.


- James Walton 2016


James Walton lives in the Strzelecki Mountains in South Gippsland, Australia. He has been published in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald newspapers, and many journals and anthologies. He has been short listed twice for the ACU national Literature Prize, is a double prize winner in the MPU International Poetry Prize, and Specially Commended in The Welsh Poetry Competition.  His collection ‘The Leviathan’s Apprentice’ is available. He’s been a Librarian, bred Salers cattle, and was a public sector union official for many years.


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