New Poetry by James Walton

There’s a Gordon Lightfoot song goes I’m on my second cup of coffee

and I still can’t face the dawn

or something like that but it’s love

he’s hung out on there when young

now chase the days trying for delay

holding on to every febrile bough

a puff of cloud on a tongue of hours

and the silence of rem all around

this place centred before diminution

half light half night half sleep

bare feet in chocolate mint’s arousal

catch a waft in dawn sight close it

all Eos to Tithonus these days

no delayed cognition for the start flag

stand down Olympus cancel the bout

old man reaching over a star, stumble.

- © James Walton 2021

James Walton is published in many anthologies, journals, and newspapers. He has been shortlisted for the ACU National Poetry Prize, the MPU International Poetry Prize, The James Tate Prize, and the Ada Cambridge Prize. He was nominated for ‘The Best of the Net’ 2019, and is a Pushcart Prize 2021 nominee. He is a winner of the Raw Art Review Chapbook Prize. He was a librarian, a cattle breeder, and mostly a public sector union official. He can be found at:  jameswalton.poetry.blog