ANNOUNCEMENT: New e-book

Oh, I am madly excited!!! My poetry collection, SECRET LEOPARD: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS 1974-2005, has just been reissued as an ebook, via my favourite publisher Content X Design. (Thank you, Delaina and Kristin!)

You can get it for only $2.99 USD in whatever format suits you (mobi for Kindle, epub for other e-readers or pdf for your computer).

Lots of wonderful poems, if I do say so myself :) and you won't find them on my blog!

(There are still a VERY few paperback copies left which I am now selling for $10 USD — and to Aussies $10 AUD — plus postage. You'll have to message me if you want one of them.)

Here is the link to the ebook.

Traveller

My stepfather showed me oceans.

Now these midnight moments
call and flesh the ketch
from childhood,
dusted by moonlight,
perfectly still
at the end of the pier.

That New Year’s Eve we danced
in circles on the sand.
Sand and sea joined flat.
We might have walked straight out
with no dividing breath.

‘St. Elmo‘s Fire,’ he said
pointing, as flame without wind
blew in the bare poles
leaving them clean.
The moon’s long wake
pierced the horizon.

My stepfather gave me boats.
Tonight he’s dying,
I’m far from home.

Twin masts faintly gilded
rise perfectly still
through all my seas, all ships
poised ever since,
a track of light
widening across the water.

Gone by morning.


First published in Universe Cat (Melbourne, Pariah Press, 1985)
Also in Secret Leopard (Paris, Alyscamps Press, 2005)

Poets United asks us for a Father's Day poem for this week's Poetry Pantry. I had two dear fathers. As Father's Day in Australia is not until September, I'll save until then a poem about my birth Dad, but here is one for my beloved stepfather. It was written in January 1981, when he was indeed dying, and the final version was completed in September 1984.


This poem was also featured by Sherry at Poets United in Poem of the Week on June 24, 2013 

Always the Writing

Always the writing writhes
to be born and flower,
pushing up through a dark
ceiling of earth.

Always it pounds in my blood
wanting to break on you,
on the reef of your hard body,
explosive as tides crashing.

The writing is rhythms that swell
and will not be gainsaid.
It pushes, burrows, surges, leaps.
Hammers and shrieks. Weeps. Begs.

After the blind climax, the ebb
has the panting of breath,
a giant wave receding.
I am its point of calm.


Written 1988; posted here now in response to dVerse Meeting the Bar: Volition and Velleity (which raises the question of whether poetry is wish or enactment).

First published The Nonsense of Living anthology by The Aardvarkers.
In Secret Leopard (Paris, Alyscamps Press, 2005)