Dove Lake Tanka
Each frozen winter
snow floods through the fagus belt,
and every spring
the hard lock of waters snaps,
the press of death slides apart.
One bare fagus slips
clear. A wind will crack its bones.
But a new, shy leaf
would bring no world of wonder.
It would come small and unremarked,
as a last eagle
in the lake's egg-pebbled shore,
winter foraging,
stoops to the silence of doom.
Sun, pink as a possum's ear.
Sounds drift and startle.
I find old lost hints of song.
Water takes my eyes,
unplugs my bones. I feel, now,
the grey, perished life of things.
I hold in my hand
a shard of crusted china
or a windfall plum,
and it is this fierce moment,
sour and close with cold, deep earh.
Other poems by Pete Hay
Sunset on the Irish Festival
Girl Reading Lorca at the Mirador San Nicolas
Echidna
The Duck's Guts
Flower Cone
Interviews with Pete Hay
Conversations: an interview with Pete Hay and Richard Flanagan (1995)
A conversation with Pete and Anna Hay (2003)
Island to island: an interview with Pete Hay (2011)
OTHER WRITING BY PETE HAY
Reviews
BEACH, Eric: Weeping for Lost Babylon
DE PAOR, Louis: Goban Cre is Cloch/Sentences of Earth and Stone
Launch speeches
MATHISON, Robyn: To Be Eaten By Mice
ROBERTS, Bruce: In the Church of Latter Day Consumers
SANT, Andrew: The Islanders
Essays
Half-Time with Stout John
Port Arthur: Where Meanings Collide
What I did on my Holidays
Notes within Shadow