Famous Reporter # 13: June, 1996

       

James Charlton

        HIGH, COUNTRY,

        BEHIND HOBART

 

The brow of The Mountain has wrinkled

and shed a slope of plinths.

Hikers see them as giant thumbs

thrust through mossy clefts,

tilted in tiredness.

 

Ice invades a crack,

demands a fissure,

undoes the dolerite -

as any form of water might abrade

the harder facts of history.

 

Snow-melt prattles down

to a city’s foetid river.

On the farthest shore,

green hills are topped

with jaggedy grey,

 

as if tufted dirty wool

in a wet rug is being teased,

this way and that. Above this: froth,

peaky as whipped egg white. The hills unravel

in skeins of vapour; a streak of murk coaxes up a squall.