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.