New _ Poetry _ Robert Wood (with original artwork by B. Ajay Sharma)

original artwork: B. Ajay Sharma

 

Poem for Mumbai

We watched cellulose turn into celluloid 

and they spoke of a city 

known by names that had succumbed 

to the water a ruin, a blade,

a memory of a time before

when the people made rafts from plastic

hid themselves in oil drums.

 

 

We listened, attentive

to the ten thousand grains of salt

that crystallised in their eyes

the colour of flies before mud rained down from the sky.

Kings Park Walk

 

Every morning, dew,

you and me go walking

past clover

past cloud

through mists to everlasting

no dust, no mind

through fields of sorrow, of joy

to healing and aid

to tea made of lime.

Every evening, when we retire

make recluses of conspirator

the light catches gold

of the morning tomorrow,

for the dew we hold and so.

School Homework

 

We climbed mulberry trees

stained fingers with youth

threw paper planes past paper tigers

from branches with silkworms the size of utes.

Added peach blossom to seashells

turned mud over to dirt

returned to the summary of haze 

and dawn found our selves waiting in turns.

original artwork: B. Ajay Sharma

For you each day, my child

 

Walk across the bridge that is my back

my vertebrae your ancestors

free of all that,

and the currents and the whales

and the seals called elephants,

floating like blood

that courses through my spine

welcomes you like hands, like wine.

 

 

Walk across the bridge that is my back

my neck your happenstance 

your answer found in returning homeward

calling where coconuts stand.

 

original artwork: B. Ajay Sharma

At the Future

 

 

At the future,

owners get together

gather to discuss what matters

from birdsong to myrtle to smoke the shape of 

water and we wait in the silence, in the breaks, 

wait like offshore breeze

for the calm to reign

for the day to graze again.

 

 

When you came in

with wattle in your hair

with lavender from the field

we asked you to wait for a moment

to remember who came before us

to remember the colour the stars had been

before they fell to earth and made ash of our elders all together.

 

original artwork : B. Ajay Sharma

To Leave is to Come Home

 

Like a stone grown cold

they say rest when you are tired, walk when 

strong and no harm will come your way.

Walk the path with the open heart

make the lungs big enough

to swallow the sun and go on

and on, till the hay is brought in

till the kangaroo paw unfurls

and all the chess games are won by pawns not 

kings on a bridge that is rainbows of waiting.