States of Poetry Tasmania

Avila

(1)

 The badly wounded and the poor
Move round the city with the sun
And little else to keep them warm,

While time softens cathedral stone,
Plucks eagles bald and breaks the wings
Of St Teresa's doves in flight.

(2)

 A fine day shows up broken teeth,
Club feet, ten thumbs and squinti ...

Distance

(after Jordie Albiston’s ‘Cartography’)

What is the space between this hut and that mountain
but impenetrable black, and frosty cold.
She is writing this at a table in the cabin,
spinning thoughts like threads, as if they can hold

her boys tighter, pull the mountain in, with their bold
tents blooming like flowe ...

Waking

Note the passive voice in that last line,
the denial implied. ‘People were shipped out.’
The agent with a conscious brain linked
to a hand with a pen or a gun felt his own grip
all along the neural pathways.

Some noises we can sleep through
but even the softest can be an alarm.
Sailboats in the calmest water are still not ...