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ARTS AND CULTURE

The bone attic

  • 19 May 2020
 Selected poems  

Coexistence

 

The dweller in the bone attic           

holds countryside as home;

thinks of food, safety, health and warmth

for family, self and group.

Frenetic scuffles rage in the brick canyons

where the hunt is commerce

and food constructed.

Eyes turn to flickering screens

ears to technology.

No time to stop or care

what the attic dweller needs for peace.

 

 

Keeping a record

 

Feelings get obscured

at each turn

on life’s twisting path.

Yet by writing

the flurries of emotion

to save them being lost

the journey can linger

to trip the tears

loosen a laugh

resonate.

 

 

Plague

 

Friendship, jostle and commerce

spreads the illness

while grief and worry grows.

Travellers transport the plague.

Farms and factories slow or stop;

toilers, teachers and children are trapped at home;

the old most at risk.

Cities try to close their gates

hoping the illness outside is barred

and that inside will die.

Contagion stalks through lands and months.

Worried people lobby rulers

to pay for the fearful quiet.

 

 

Back of the tiger

 

Was it the slow slide

after crippling early abuse

or does your body hold some weakness

your mind a derailing flaw

that sets danger prowling

to attack and damage

destroying self belief

holding you to addiction?

A thief from family and friends

can you deny the craving

today, with help

to take one big step?

Paul Williamson is an Australian poet. He has published poems in Australia, UK, US, Canada and Japan. His has five collections including  Edge of Southern Bright (Ginninderra Press, 2017).  He contributed to and participated in the release of the Canberra/Nara Twin City tanka poetry volume in Nara, Japan in late 2018.
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