New Poetry by Matt McAlpine

Directions from a Cartographer 

A blind man walks
with one foot stepping on the yellow line
at strathfield station
on the fourth platform in the morning
in november when the sun hits the carriage
in such a way that it blinds
everyone else, too

the sun each morning rises
yesterday it rose again across
the heat of strathfield station
blinding others in the street

soon summer crossed the flattened town
the blind man walks
again around the streets divisive
in his aura crowned
unknowingly.

A man steps along a wire
strung between two trees their weathered trunks
erected high above the path, they stretch
posed unto their
speckled canopy

the man walks narrow steps he takes
no deviation from that wire
floating, nor hesitation to and from
each end where he begins
to tread again

above the streets
alive and shining where the crowd remains
he walks, free from any glare there blinding, walks though
to no place that
deviates from tree to tree
the air he lives in, surely safer
than below, uncertainty.

When then the intersection? In which
space do these two
meet? The streets are hot in summer
but the air can burn no feet,
which passage to be taken
at which place should they remain,
together perhaps in the summer
heat, or up in the clouds
with that eventual rain?


- Matt McAlpine 2019

Matt McAlpine is a poet from the Blue Mountains currently residing in Nantes, France. He is working on his first collection of poetry Views from the Mountaintop.