Peter Coghill

Colo River

Weeds ripple, waters ride
over rocks, and leaves
sweep corners as I ease
into a pool, and hide
where warm caresses slide,
unlike the fretful breeze
or back and forth of seas,
in an unending glide.
Here arms and fingers loll
out lines as soon erased,
and in a womb of waste
and water “I” dissolve.
Two rivers carry me
towards, for one, the sea.

Wattle and the North Wind

There’s moisture in the soil, but in the sun
the wattle’s flowering on a dusty wind —
first hints of spring.
That north-west wind, which barely warmed a thing
two weeks ago, will soon rescind
all winter in a day, and dun
the edges of the wheat
with air smelling of cut-grass green and heat.

And on that wind, far north in autumn now,
the leaves are falling golden at their time,
a graceful dying,
compared to early spring’s untimely drying,
betrayed in August by the sign
of gold floating on every bough.
Flowers, in a sort of treason,
with their first hints of spring in a dry season.