Issue 1: Peter Minter

Pre-emptory

At the end of the day

     we have made it this far

here, a star at the water’s edge

     the one river, the one tree

low cloud skimmed wraith in the sunlight

     bright where Aristeas

steps foot over the south gate, the sandstone quay

     happily hyper

without cause on the upswing

     of pure sleep, clothed in a tempest

free &, in any case

     dreaming that

there is no comparison

     in love, in death—   

a single gull turning on the sea wind

     ice a shoal on the boulevard          

the west’s turquoise desert

     where jets circle, nest in the flailing sun

(you glance into fire, bloodwood

     the accommodation of resin

eucalypt, iron bark

     steel dark feathers again

Peter Minter is a leading contemporary Australian poet, editor and scholar who lectures in Indigenous Studies and Poetics at the Koori Centre, University of Sydney. His fifth book of poetry, blue grass, is published by Salt Publishing.

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