spring
as the chilly wheel buckles …
from the rock, banded by iron drought
from the dry rot of winter
from the hard enclosing garden walls
of stunted ranges
each peak a balletic point of morning dream
of distant mandolins of mist, fleeting as a bird in a mirror,
pirouetting on the surface of a fingerling stream
as you open your eyes, throat tinder dry, and lost
— a mast, the sky sways,
a vein, the sky swells,
the dark park branches
blossom with dawn
over the jagged benches
transitory
with the sigh of a brassy blast —
it comes
water is sweet
once more,
and the rain is not vinegar
the sun rolls too quickly
along the ecliptic
- © Robert Verdon 2021
Robert Verdon is an Australian / British writer of poetry and prose with a PhD from the University of Canberra. He came 2nd in the 2012 W.B. Yeats Poetry Prize for Australia. His books include The Well-Scrubbed Desert (Canberra: Polonius, 1994), Her Brilliant Career (Canberra: Aberrant Genotype Press, 1998), My Cat Eats Spaghetti (Canberra: Ginninderra Press, 1999), Before we Knew this Century (Liverpool, UK: Erbacce Press, 2010), and a spiral life (Canberra: Resurgam, 2020).
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