States of Poetry - Poems

'This' by James Charlton | States of Poetry Tasmania - Series Two

by James Charlton •

States of Poetry Tasmania - Series Two

States of Poetry - Poems

'This' by James Charlton | States of Poetry Tasmania - Series Two

by James Charlton •

States of Poetry Tasmania - Series Two

We invent the colour ‘blue’
and say the sky is blue.
An older language
sees everything
as sacrament.

Soggy Winter has become Spring’s fullness.
Pungent cascades of melaleuca:
frothy white, yellow, pink.

Do we feel small sounds
all around? A waft of midges
in sun-shafts; the just-here-ness
of lichen.

We participate in the weakness, in the power, of the Vast.|
Black-faced cuckoo-shrike tilts her head.
Resiny spinules of grass tree.

A tract of land becomes inner experience;
the pronouns ‘I’, ‘me’ and ‘my’ dissolve in the dusk,
and come back
changed.

James Charlton

James Charlton

James Charlton graduated from the University of Tasmania, and from Flinders University and the University of Cambridge. He was Poetry Editor of Island magazine and Advisory Editor for Australasia of Chautauqua Literary Journal, published in upstate New York. Charlton earned his PhD from the University of Tasmania and his MA from the University of Cambridge. He is a poet and theological writer with an interest in transformative spiritual knowledge and experience, across traditions. His latest book, from Bloomsbury Publishing, is Non-dualism in Eckhart, Julian of Norwich and Traherne (2012).