Poet in Residence @ Bistro Bistro in Cooroy

Geoffrey Datson is the Australian Poetry Centre 'cafe poet' in residence at Bistro Bistro in Cooroy for the next four months. Each week or so he will post a poem on the menu board, all of which will be included in his forthcoming memior "Then, and Then", about his move from Sydney to a farm in the hills behind Cooroy.

The memior will be launched in conjunction with the Sunshine Hinterland Writers' Centre and Bistro Bistro at the forthcoming Reality Bites Literary Non-fiction Festival (24 July - 1 August) in Cooroy in 2010

Here is the first one. You can hear the audio version of it here.

What Thou Art

Time line, 1977

Spring I guess

Sunrise.on Black Mountain Road

the air a-pulse with incandescent wildlife

Hello universe!

Imagination,

it’s a field of abandoned cars

Native tobacco, and ferns burst through rust

Oxidation

We’re all on the slow burn down here

So, to the floor of a fifty-seven De Soto:

discarded tools, feathers,

crushed beer cans, greasy rags

and a message from the out-lands,

as without, so within.

And I’m hearing Patti Smith and

I’ve been reading the symbolist poets and

I’m fairly pretentious

Another lonely boy

out on the weekend

But, it’s a big land

and given to dreaming

Through the windscreen

the morning clouds pile up

our heaped canopy of joy

And fearful

that my head will explode

from too much cumulonimbus

Out and spinning, spinning

Spin the world,

slow

till racing backwards

retreat into our own eternal sunset

Hey Sheba, hey Salome, hey Venus

eclipse them my way

And a quarter of a century later

I dreamt of this same morning

crouching in the wet grass

hugging myself hysterical with connection

and voicing all time

in the wet grass

Orca by Gabriell Bryden

Gabrielle Bryden's poem 'Orca' has recently been published in the online ezine Third Eye. You can read more from this Hervey Bay author at her blog.

‘Orca is one of those poems that pulls you in right from the start. The imagery is especially powerful. Not only that, but the rhythm is just right. Together, this is an irresistible combination. I understand your fascination with the juxtaposition of fear and awe. Power and beauty. Weakness and hope. Orca doesn’t come along every day. Please allow us to add this to the December edition of Third Eye. Our readers will be most excited!’

Livaboard 1 by Stafford Ray

As an infant, I loved all the rides,
The see-saw, the swing and the slides.
So now, on my mooring,
My life’s never boring.
I go up and down with the tides!

Stafford Ray lives aboard a yacht moored in Mooloolaba harbour.