TEXT Poetry

rob walker

vocabulary of the beach

each morning

each tide

a recombinant story

today an almost
blank page. a feathery weed

brushes a haiku

After the storm a cyrillic of bleached Posidonia

Sumi-e black seagrass on whitepapered sand

Chats leave their own story in cuneiform

everyday
The mystery

explained.

the rosetta stone,

undiscovered.

Wire fence

construct one.
you'll know a truth
that sees inherent
energy

strain the chain
with ratchet force
burn fuel
create heat

sweat and
muscle
fulcrum and lever
of bone tie off
high tensile
find the midpoint with flatsteel twist.
of highstrung and cut with grunting pliers
breaking strain

now it stands there
motionless
replete with static
latent power

horizontal
counterstrained
by

diagonal.

permapine in equilibrium.

motionless. full of tension.

rob walker teaches Music and Drama at Woodcroft Primary School, Adelaide. His work appeared in Best Australian Poems 2005. He has published two books of poetry, Sparrow in an Airport (a shared volume), and micromacro, which was published by Seaview Press when he won the 2006 Onkaparinga Poetry Prize.

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