Walleah Press        

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

St Kilda Beach

Hobart 4 pm, mid-winter

Man with Pigs

Wandering

The Man Who Gropeth Forever

Residual Limbs

Birds


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)