Poems by James Walton
James Walton is published in many anthologies, magazines, and newspapers. He was a librarian, a farm labourer, and mostly a public sector union official. He resigned from an elected position in 2014 to write. His books include ‘The Leviathan’s Apprentice’ 2015, ‘Walking Through Fences’ 2018, and ‘Unstill Mosaics’ 2019. He has been previously shortlisted for the ACU National Literature Prize, The MPU International Poetry Prize, The James Tate Prize, Jupiter Artland, The William Wantling Prize, and is a winner of the Raw Art Review Chapbook Prize for “Abandoned Soliloquies’ to be published shortly, but as a full-length collection. He lives in Wonthaggi, Victoria, Australia, in a Federation house which was once a maternity ward.
Uncaged animals
They speak
but then they don’t
these handlers of truth
their baton tongues rattle
along loose evaporating bars
we see through a decline
without any nurture
the promise withering within
still
I’ll hold your hand
step out Fred and Ginger
fall and rise
hand on cuff less wrist
over this diapason rescue
but then again
the sideshow ennui
calls us back
one last performance
we will grow tired
of the ringmaster’s whip
stand up with the big cat
nine tails or lives
if you slip
I will slip too
one for one
this is how a number grows.
They don’t know about horses
those who talk of standing sleep
how they curl like cats
snuffle ground as wingless dragons
or idle attent in the full sun
because there are not enough days
to feel earth undulate in the tease of burlap
pose rump into the weather
always alert for the summons
the startled flap of plovers
as unshod hooves cherish gallop
then call across fences
their voices tuned for a herd
whickering out the lost posse
rubbing morse on iron gates
the criss cross code of a sudden lick
a scrape of brisket colour
to mark the strain in barbed wire
and always their eyes of finest glaze
seeking truth in the most human places
Three hundred and sixty seconds is all it took
fewer than a ghost town
where the currawongs
scrawl their names
the half tail feral cat
hiccups the last budgie’s feathers
the post office doors
open outward
once a river dawdled
many places to go
environmental flows
lapsed in occupation
big trees rolled
throughout the compass
six-minute people
scratch out lives
the win beneath the crinkle
hesitates for bearing
set and dawn
the twenty-four hours persist
faith swings
out of the pendulum chime
calls out the broken testament
see what time it really is
against the oldest occupation*
*Indigenous leaders point out that white occupancy of the Australian continent if measured against the timescale of indigenous settlement, would amount to only six minutes against 24 hours.
© James Walton