hopes
hope isn't blue or loose or lost.
hope is full.
hope isn't tearful or funny
or berserk.
hope is cumulus and shag pile.
hope isn't
mood or diameter or pinned.
hope is hinge
hope is note
and bottle and flotsam and found.
hope isn't
pulpit or coal fired or concave.
hope is spinifex and singing.
hope is rain
the jetty of you
if you were to lie here long enough,
let the moon do its work,
let tide and salt and wind lick your stories,
gulls thieve your last commas,
just you then, the full stops, the very stumps
of the jetty of you
if you were to do the forgetting,
allow the sky to scrawl
in cirrus the shaded angst of you,
just you then, taut and wisped
and stretching, all join the dots on blue
if you were, this last time,
to lose North and gravity and being,
just you then, yes, just you
six black holes
I hum. I talk aloud to
myself. I cease in
six black holes of déjà-vu.
I sing. I push the
quick off the moon. I wake in
sleep. I tongue but you
before the fall
before the fall of thinking,
before rain,
before the song of wet earth,
low white noise.
hear it as the chant of
the unseens —
ripple in a magpie's throat —
as the sigh
of a city's prayer cushions —
forgiveness
has the weight of faith and cloud.
and then rain,
symphonic on tin, washing
walls of doubt
Kevin Gillam is a West Australian writer with work published in numerous Australian and overseas journals. His two published books of poetry are Other Gravities (2003) and Permitted To Fall (2007), both by SunLine Press.