Bus Stop
by PAT SAUNDERS I step forward without looking feet float arms flail head somersaults swim through air the world spins more than once colours slomo stretch endlessly ears hear nothing not a sound landing’s hard butt and hip hurt badly…
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Sandstone Gorge
by JANEEN SAMUEL In this place is silence: would that the world could listen and be so still. There is no stirring of trees nor grasses; the pale-eyed lizard either is motionless or swift as a flicker of thought –…
Look, it’s the Noosa everglades
by MARGARET OWEN RUCKERT where forests of strap-plants, edge-loving land-dwellers, conceal the swamp beyond & vie for space like flags in a crowd. No rationing of water or sun in paradise. Water is tropical here, but rarely topical. A bow…
Blue cloud band
by MARGARET OWEN RUCKERT I’m walking the edge of a sleepy river slapping its sides like a cool bass player jazz at sunset, songs in the air horns and wood, winds over water. Mike’s antique piano smooches and honks…
On turning away
by PETER ROBERTS The great rivers of East Gippsland pass by like an avenue of honour. Nicholson, Mitchell, Tambo, Snowy, Bemm and more. It is their determination we admire most – to cut through rock and clay, taking no backward…
Maatsuyker
by PETER ROBERTS We are all refugees. His pipe etched a halo of Champion Ruby fumes that even the blast of the Roaring Forties couldn’t displace. Why did she leave him? Rising, he paused to watch the fairy prions and…
Winter in Darwin
by PETER ROBERTS I undertake this ritual each night post the dishes seated on the rendered balcony a rhapsody of bougainvillea below as the sun slowly deconstructs into the calm of the Arafura Sea across which…
A drama of distance
by IAN REID Some neighbours shun some outlooks. Across the street the blinds are always shut. It’s nothing personal; she seems civil enough but likes to keep eyes closed to the trickling traffic. They are luckier here in this old…
Position, position
by IAN REID What it lacks in structural elegance, this house makes up for in its elevated posture. Most of the city and suburbs spread out flatly but here, leaning with hands on a sill, the occupants can gaze across…
Riverbeds
by STEPHANIE POWELL Your appreciation of this lake is taxonomic, silt oozing Lower Palaeozoic deposits, the generational ebbing of rock. Don’t be stupid the fish are gone and you won’t find them with your palms in the stream. The sun…