Pomes

[faustus]

Blue

Below me is nothing but sky
to soothe my eyes or break my fall;
as Icarus I reach beyond –
aspiring, trying, flying, I
gaze upon a rippled sky, all
ebb, flow, all out of reach, beyond,
Terra Incognita, Due South,
among the cloud beings, through
a wall of steam, of water, of beyond,
and then coming into land, mouth
agog, across an eternal beach,
dune upon dune, sand land beyond
the horizon, eyes looking south,
at last city lights and I reach
an end beneath a different sky.

Black

A red line around a black form:
a canvas absorbing all light
and looks as even now this sky
sucks out the colours to be worn
by the slow miles of outback night.
In double glazing I catch my
forehead glinting, a stretch of red
skin burnt by the south, in my sight
I catch a homestead, stars go by,
trucks hung with Christmas lights,
a shed, rarely, almost as if they are
waiting for scenery to dry
before the next scene can be read,
imprints glimpsed in ink from afar,
then at the edges of sight: dawn.

Red

The ants are crawling up the rock –
no, not ants but people: dwarfed by
scale, by height, by distance, by time.
They are treading on memories of rock:
the old serpent down from the sky,
the red rage and black scars of time.
And there is a language in stone –
primeval upheaval, a cry
in the dark, perhaps half in mime,
an enigma now mostly known
under sunsets, twisting degrees
into the air, weathering grime
of aeons, nights chill to the bone,
days cooking in skin, age squeezes
the summit flat: this sacred rock.