Gelassenheit
Waiting, something opens
without our willing it,
without force.
Calm, in half-light, the horizon
crosses our sight,
the opening
of a dawn, a memory,
half-hoped for
your metaphors coming home
familiar ghosts, dreamed of
as they cross through the loved fields
and dry gullies,
bringing with them unspoken conversation,
new thought suspended
without knowing,
awaited, but unattended.
A vastness of silent notes
accompanies us, a symphony
we have longed to hear
of belief far beyond
our interpretations, open
to the swinging movement, and the resting
between here and any horizon
you have ever dreamed, seeing
the other side
of this surrounding openness
coming to meet us,
this spaciousness which is halted and held,
where everything merges
immeasurable in its own resting.
Lyn McCredden
Deity
Apostasy
A decree for heroism
Your fatal lesson for heretics
Even the Kubla Khan,
Its dome decree
Because reality was an enemy
Surely enmity is yours
When young hands fumble at adulthood
It smells of invasion
As if a holy alliance
Between someone else's territory
And your epitaph
Prophets of air and text
All the more sanctimonious
When no one is there to undo it.
Yet small hands joined
Becomes an unbreakable crowd
The burning can melt shrapnel
They bring you down
And call it worship a legacy
Others call it truncated
Kerry Ridgway
What I must cling to
sight's transaction with light
throb and swerve of voices
rain's scent on hot pavement
tiny spider's web art
morning mist hanging cool
moist odour of mown hay
freefalling in love's shock
stars shooting a scoured sky
forest breakfast's echoes
waterfall's silver plunge
quick pulse of silken skin
baby's chuckling wet kiss
strange train journey through snow
dawn in a great city
gleeful flea market finds
stark abbey's moon shadows
ache of harbour foghorns
thunder's warlord fanfare
estuary boats tide-beached
distant wildflowers haze
heavy silence of leaves
white house with blue shutters
winter hearth's lambent blaze
creaking of this old floor
Ian C. Smith
Lyn McCredden teaches literary and cultural studies at Deakin University, Melbourne. She is the author of a number of critical texts on the sacred, including Intimate Horizons (with Bill Ashcroft and Frances Devlin-Glass) and Luminous Moments: the Contemporary Sacred.
Kerry Ridgway is a Melburnian who enjoys writing articles and poetry. She has written a book and screenplay, and enjoys writing about anything in any form.
Ian C. Smith lives in the Gippsland Lakes region of Victoria. His work has appeared in Axon:Creative Explorations,The Best Australian Poetry, Five Poetry Journal, Island, Red Room Company, Southerly, and Westerly. His fifth book is Contains Language.