Poems by Laurie Duggan
Blue Hills 77
the glint of a car through a screen door
a clang of metal gates
at night the clatter of freight trucks
on the Bankstown line
the birds in this vicinity
are large or predatory
no spuggies hereabouts
to fledge
Blue Hills 78
stones in the bottom of a jar
the water yellows
hyssop
(a
crossword clue)
church bells
(no certain
location)
a man carries a cat box across a courtyard
Blue Hills 79
the ridges of this place
thought a flat city
where bins clatter in a bluestone alley,
that
basalt edge
runs through Melbourne’s west.
someone looks out from a balcony
the way the old pass the time
(texting intently)
noises off:
trains the far side of Royal Park
a fire alarm
mimicked by a bird
Blue Hills 80
one of those eucalypts,
pink, vague shape
of a human body,
across the road
from a Boer War veteran
stranded on the median
Blue Hills 82
the balance of colour, shape
and texture
a painting
of vases, bouquets,
stray objects
a shoe, a leaf, a
bottle,
a carved bird,
even a painting
within the painting,
perhaps a
picket fence
beyond this, the idea that art
might be useful
it might help you to sell something
Blue Hills 85
the bend of this river
once paradise
a mingling of salt and fresh
and whatever lived on the ground
what was the name of this place?
(what is the
name)
and who to ask?
the rock ledges painted by recent visitors
over a century back
a discovery of light
of how to work with underpainting
and not neutralize
the effect of atmosphere
Allotment 103
into the sun
across mudfields
a letterbox
mimics a barn
red berries glow
in a dark landscape
Allotment 104
stillness
a pond
the sun
at angle
outline of
a stile
dark against
dry grass,
then white
an egret
on the marsh
Allotment 109
barking dogs
turn out to be geese, a flock
over marshland,
mud islands guarded
by a spit
at Church Norton
Allotment 113
I’m in
the yard at Iklectik, too early for the reading. I’m seated on an old lounge
chair under a shelter hemmed with hay bales and autumn leaves, a warped
geodesic dome to my right. It’s a strange oasis on prime developmental land
(between Lambeth Palace and Waterloo Station). The last time I was here I heard
a nightingale. Now it’s distant football practice and the rumble of trains over
the viaducts. Will anybody show up? Someone in an adjacent office knocks off,
bolts the shutters and turns out the lights. Paper lanterns wave in the breeze.
A mangy fox trots down the path. Lights go on in the hall. Someone has entered
through a back door. The fox reappears. And a man with an electric keyboard.
Allotment 116
for
realism
the
right of way
from Brogdale Road
blocked
by developers
Allotment 118
a red
kite rides thermals
over
Didcot
distant
beeches
crown Wittenham
clumps
Allotment 119
a
decadent walks his butterflies
past
Goodnestone chapel to Graveney
too
early in the season for the odour
of
strawberries
instead,
the Creek,
its
sewage outfall,
Harveys
in the Phoenix
