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.
More poetry by James Charlton
Reviews of James Charlton's poetry
Anne Kellas, reviewing Luminous Bodies
David Kelly, reviewing So Much Light
(and Stephen Edgar's History of the Day)