Three Poems

Three Poems

Granite

I find the empty quarter:
A few intersecting lines on a map
Among granite boulders

Traversed by rivers with long names
Some that still speak
With their original voices

Let's go there to hide
In that upland country
Barren penetrating silence

Is the only place
That will recognise us
Standing side by side at twilight

Under the snow gums
Your whisper will reach mine
And the offence remain nameless

Lagoon

If I should lose all faith in God I think that I should continueto believe invincibly in the world.
teilhard de chardin

Lagoon paddler, as the fisherman said:
ask your dream
for the route.
Windy sky, the storyman shows me
green leaves where people have slept.
The sandy ground is warm as a blanket.
I spread out under the mahogany—
now I know the story, I have to wait here.
Who would believe me?
Storyman, it's time we went walking.

w

I grieve in the dunes
Their shelter, their perfect windswept lines
A blue sky that watched over us
That rippled
Like joy
The dunes give back to me as grief

People lived here and we found them
We shared the way the trees covered the land
Their green heads level with the dunes
When we looked down on the lagoon
The clear ground beneath
Was still waiting

Light burning light
Travels the dunes
Swept up the gully by the southwesterly
Blows through me
On the sand ridge
Cross legged
And close to me
Light burning light
Teach me to say goodbye