The hall
is stubborn in stubble,
vertical-board peeling white
to sere grey.
Category: Poems
Poetry by Pete Hay
Cider Gums
Seen first, a parabolic etching
sun-seared against sky.
At the tree’s skirt, a promiscuous spawn.
Possum and wallaby will do for them.
Best not to mourn.
Listen out – I’ll be on RN! And did you notice this is a new site?
Last week I read a poem for RN (Radio National), a pre-recording to be broadcast in the Friday 8-9am timeslot. I read the second section of ‘Regret’, the less abstract part of the larger poem, that which considers the poignant interaction between an anonymous male Aboriginal and the equally anonymous French sailor, Piron. (Well, Piron was ‘equally anonymous’ at the time I wrote the poem, though I’ve been told that subsequent scholarship has supplied much biographical data.) It was a portentous engagement, and I’ve always preferred this section of ‘Regret’ to the more abstract first part of the poem. ‘Regret’ is to be found in the third group of poems in Physick, ‘Metaphysics’. What I can’t tell you, however, is on which upcoming Friday the poem will go to air. Sorry. But tune in. Continue reading “Listen out – I’ll be on RN! And did you notice this is a new site?”
A few more things that have happened/are happening
Back so soon? – well, the fact is I held a couple of items back in my post the other day. It seemed to me that I’d already hit you with too many words, and I hold the view that, in this didgy world, the ‘too much’ limit is reached sooner rather than later. So I cut it short.
Anyway, here follow the items I held back the other day. Continue reading “A few more things that have happened/are happening”
A few things have happened …
… since I last posted. There have been two more performances of Indignados!, one in the inner-Hobart Latin American cafe, Yambu, and the other in the very beautiful Eaglehawk Neck Community Hall. Each was a triumph, and in both cases we had a full house. As I’m about to go to Greece for a month Continue reading “A few things have happened …”
Nailing Pooranateré
(On tenacious proposals to erect a cable car on The Mountain)
This mountain now. Assume it rich and slippery
of mood. Let it nudge the morning talk abroad.
Let it slip within the old town’s skirt. Continue reading “Nailing Pooranateré”
I’m Driving: Laughing Jack to Hobart
Laughing Jack Lagoon is at my back.
Suddenly there is shatter.
Shatter cluttering to the horizon.
Some treefern survive.
Arched fronds nod a knowing,
cast it on the wind. Continue reading “I’m Driving: Laughing Jack to Hobart”
Pioneer Cemetery, Zeehan
Posterity, in this town, was of no account.
You’d not have thought to die here –
the idea was to salt it away and leave,
to be remembered, in God’s good time,
elsewhere. Continue reading “Pioneer Cemetery, Zeehan”
White Words
Published in ‘Silently On The Tide’ (2005)
…could feel the weakness of… big/local govt… what sort of culture…
will not be available… best sort of market we can… people have a global…
This is an age of data and dead hills.
This is a time of envenomed meal for the mouth.
. In the newsroom they are all a-lather: Continue reading “White Words”
Beautiful Firetail
. Wounded sun, light leaking down.
Winter rules the growling beach, this treacherous
stretch I have trudged, lead-footed, with the dog.
It is ungraspable, a thing of surge and storm,
. of sly, surreptitious shift. Continue reading “Beautiful Firetail”