Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

'Neither on this Mountain' by Ben Walter | States of Poetry Tasmania - Series Two

by
States of Poetry Tasmania - Series Two

'Neither on this Mountain' by Ben Walter | States of Poetry Tasmania - Series Two

by
States of Poetry Tasmania - Series Two

walk hard –

grains of weather glitter like the night has sunk,
streaks of thin stars, light rain sharpening the scrub;
we are small, so small in the draining sky
as squalls stroke searching for our skin.
sweat-slumped on tussocks, raw pools
smoking in the famished sun.

dragging mud across my knees,
I whip my skin with shards.
words are blunt in whisperings of gust.

walk hard –

no honour now for forms of fashioned sand,
trudging hymns and letters from the pines,
so many echoes pressed on pebbles; our feet
recite their chants as eyes beseech
the cool vaults hammered from the cloud,
split pews slung by wavering columns.

the yellow gums were moved,
I have candles in my hands.
this calendar of worship nettles moons.

walk hard –

such easy mist settling in low valleys;
wooden toes adrift from maps, the margins
dense and white. our fingers cease
to link in cramped log barricades with
rats scrawling slogans on the walls. where then,
the vision of our bodies lifted up?

we do not walk as withdrawn saints,
we do not go naked into the west.

Ben Walter

You May Also Like

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.