Live Encounters Poetry & Writing 16th Anniversary Volume Three
November- December 2025
Time’s Tracks, poems by David Adès.
Time’s Tracks
There’s always tomorrow
I used to think at the end of each day
with more left to do than at the start
and it seemed a comfort going to sleep
planning all I would do upon waking,
snuggled up in my thoughts and dreams
nurturing all those green shoots
of the unfinished or not yet begun.
I didn’t hear the freight train
of tomorrows rumbling past,
clickety clack on time’s tracks,
a sooty cumulus of yesterdays
spreading in its wake. There’s still tomorrow
I think now though with none
of my former conviction,
much more than dreams of a life
gone the way all things go.
Medley With Ghazal
men neither glib nor garrulous,
Go, get these men, your friends, and bind them
into an incantation, a gleam, a gathering of men.
gather their unspoken gestating griefs,
their broken glasshouses,
Count among them a gardener, a former geologist,
a Greek, a German, a group, a guild of men.
take the gruff, the grim, the grizzled,
gain the trust, grind the grist,
Go beyond the gauze, the graze, deep into the gash,
the wound, the unarticulated depths of men.
go gently with your listening ear,
relax the grip, the gripes, the ghosts,
Glean their truths, their gritty grains of wisdom,
all the hard-won gains, the gems of men.
gird yourself, get past the gridlock,
accept their gestures, their generous gifts
Garner the glint, the grey-haired gravitas, the gusts,
the gratitude, the general gist of men.
freely given, glimmering like gold,
hold on to the guardrails of guidance,
Give up grumbling, gambling, gangs, garrisons,
the macho gambit, gallantry, all the war games of men.
be glad, shelter in the glade of support,
anchor yourself in the gravity of their gaze,
Go past the green grove to the glistening grotto,
gravitate to the grooves, the gravelly songs of men.
let go of glowering, of guilt, open the gates
to growth, to grace, go together until the grave.
The Secret Life of Poems
What? You thought they just lay there
on the page waiting for the glancing
sweep of your eyes?
Where is your imagination?
Think of your first love,
of the first time you stood waiting
inside her front door,
at how your breath hitched in your throat
with the nervous mischief on her face,
her hair just so, the snug fit of her dress,
the aura that surrounded her,
before you knew how many outfits
she had tried and discarded,
left strewn across her room,
or her parades before the mirror,
all the subtle changes she made,
those other drafts of herself —
and think, later, of the first time
she lay before you
at what she revealed
and what remained hidden,
the inadequate sweep of your eyes,
and how you puzzled over what she said
and puzzled more over what she didn’t,
the way no matter how deeply you read her,
there was always more to confound you.
Right there, the secret life of poems.
© David Adès
David Adès is the author of Mapping the World, Afloat in Light and the chapbook Only the Questions Are Eternal. His latest collections are The Heart’s Lush Gardens (Flying Island Books 2024) and the chapbook The Toolmaker and Other Poems (Walleah Press 2025). A new collection, A Blink of Time’s Eye is forthcoming in 2025 from Five Islands Press. David won the Wirra Wirra Vineyards Short Story Prize 2005 and the University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor’s International Poetry Prize 2014. Mapping the World was commended for the FAW Anne Elder Award 2008. David’s poems have been read on the Australian radio poetry program Poetica and have also featured on the U.S. radio poetry program Prosody. His poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize three times and twice been shortlisted for the Newcastle Poetry Prize. His poems have been Highly Commended in the Bruce Dawe National Poetry Prize, a finalist in the Dora and Alexander Raynes Poetry Prize (U.S.) and commended for the Reuben Rose International Poetry Prize (Israel). David is the host of the monthly poetry podcast series “Poets’ Corner” which can be found at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLb8bHCZBRMBjlWlPDeaSanZ3qAZcuVW7N. He lives in Sydney with his wife and three children.