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Summer, 2003


Dennis Greene

Two Poems


Three Pictures of a Dam

 
Last night,
under a moon-white sky
the wind came up out of the east south east;
unexpected,
strong,
it tore the words out of our mouths,
the sparks out of the fires;
it flung quick light
towards the yellow grass.

Yesterday
moon and sun
balanced the sky;
sunset
and moonrise
promised perfection:
we were almost
satisfied.

Galahs flew
over the dam this morning,
moving from north
to south;
grey winged over debris,
liquid pink
on the water,
they crossed the wall,
turned west;
the world in their heads,
the ash and the words
on the ground.

 
Beyond the Fence
 
Here, on the inside,
where the land
enfolds the water,
and the wall
defines its ends,
we are contained
by dimensions of vision,
made tame
by the width of the sky,
reduced by passionate divisions,
to a small i.

Beyond the fence
the sky absorbs the eye,
and we are contours
in the flatness of old hills,
old roads that cling
to fading skylines;
caught
in the yellow folds
of the yellow fields
we mutter with the voice
of road-trains
hold horizons in our hands.

Somewhere out there
the city knows us;
the wheatfields think about us;
the silos fill with grain;

and further south,
where oceans start and end,

Antarctica
begins.