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