Greg McLaren

I'm a poet whose work has been published almost widely. After Han Shan, my Flying Islands book, is from way back in 2012. Other books include The Kurri Kurri Book of the Dead, Australian ravens and Windfall (Puncher & Wattmann). 

          

Valley

 After Louise Crisp

 

 The yards and droughts, they went on forever.

The hills baring themselves from our shame.

Skeletal fruit trees, their juiceless husks, tiny desiccated bats.

Topsoil sloughed and carved off, earth and its wealth found under dug up,

prised out, words slashed through the insides of houses given up on.

A small black dog in the shed outside, something jumping on its roof.

Was that me? The trees behind, between us and the moon-slick rail,

wiping the sky’s underside.

                                          My daughter, a few specks of her glitter

lit on these pages, on a sick day.

                                                  I thought I was free to wander.