Songs And Verses Poem by Martin Harrison

The white table, the white chairs,
there under the casuarinas —
flies circle it, buzzing, zig-zagging:
the eye’s blood-red cotton vein.

*

Back there, a small room’s packed up life:
silence reigns in this house. Street-sounds
wash in like ripples, lapping a fallen log.
Beyond them, tree-clouded lakes murmur.

*

We are on a journey,
a journey which is ours,
made of figurative moves
asking who made so many souls.

The journey goes on,
though you and I stay still:
mosquitoes swarm the dried-up creeks,
ghostly herons stalk bronze reeds.

*

Here a grub hammers away
at its world of sky and wood:
there’s day sheen, there’s day glimmer,
while warm gusts glint on bark.