New Poetry by James Walton

Inverloch – Cape Paterson Road, late August

The car park at Eagle’s Nest is nearly empty
and down the steep staircase, neatly arriving people
trickle in hesitation of a complete view.
A full tide has spread spongy wilted sand
all soft without reflection, a copse of twisted wattle
holds to purpose where the erosion bites.
Warning Signs don’t stop visitors from testing
the Strait’s gritty pull, the sea’s hypnotic stride
tap dancing away on the buckle bright shoreline.
Kelp is wedged up at each end of the bay
a russet parenthesis in need of  expression, idling cormorants
glide by in their defiant bobbing coiffure.
A Winter moon is stitched on a light denim sky
prescient in daytime; some Iranian children
laugh out Hello Mister chasing their runaway kite.
Beyond the craggy hide the Cape bends in reverse crescent
eyebrows over an ocean face, cars make a way
as greying follicles of squint into the receding west.


- James Walton 2017

James Walton is an Australian poet published in newspapers, and many journals, and anthologies. Short listed twice for the ACU National Literature Prize, a double prize winner in the MPU International Poetry Prize, Specially Commended in The Welsh Poetry Competition - his collection ‘The Leviathan’s Apprentice’ was published in 2015. He was a librarian, a farm labourer, a cattle breeder, and a public sector union official.