The day begun with an Acknowledgement of Country by Aunty Ruth Bryant, who also tickled our taste buds with a poem of hers.

John Watson's collection Occam's Aftershave was a delight to read. Watson's poetry is philosophical and the major theme of this collection is poetry; the forms of poetry and the relationship that readers have with poetry.



I was in love with his writing style from the first poem, which I heard him read at the Carrington Hotel in Katoomba. 'To the Faithful Reader' is a poem full of wit. Taunting us as readers, "...if you believe this you'll believe / Anything, and are thereby…

Warm

I receive her body

embrace of pollen

and wool

Her squeeze

I breathe as

my chest becomes

metal to heat

running honey

to my mouth

my face

Care

of breast and arms

my gift

is the…

There is a place, behind the eyes

where calm and quiet waits,

far from cities and suburbs of noise.

I go there, glad to be away from

visual and verbal pollution,

and increasingly massive hysteria.

A closing of the eyes gains entry

to an inner sanctum, a place of happy

memory, of slow motion movement

and lethargic thought.

A place to rest and restore emotions,

and gently patch over the cracks in

the facade of…

The book begins…

the sound of her was in the street

flayed to an ochre asphalt

dripped down from a generous bourbon

fermentation brings a night that doesn't hurt

the stench of cancer is in her vomit:

she knows she doesn't have long

until it's shit in the sheets

and a pain that can't be described

it hurts just to blink

and you can't even

slow it down

but before

before this time

that doesn't feel real

she was…

We came to the islands

the sun rose from the ground



hieroglyphics of yearning collectives

arms raised to shake

equanimity's wheat



for the day's work

reading stones

etched with lifecycle by evening



the tree sap enters the finch

through night

for the tree must sing too



promises…

Life flows on,

uneventful,

undemanding,

till one moment

in time

changes that life.

Plans are shelved,

roadmaps altered,

instructions given,

new direction,

for better

for worse,

for ever.