Best Australian Poems 2009

This poem is included in this year's anthology Best Australian Poems 2009 edited by Robert Adamson. It's being launched today in Sydney. It has previously been published in Melbourne's Age newspaper and in my collection, Earth's Breath. The photo was taken as Cyclone Larry raged outside our window on 20 March 2006.


Climate change: yugantameghaha

At the end of every cosmic cycle
at the end of a generation―yuganta-
meghaha¬―clouds congregate
gathering souls for the next yuga

cloud breath, soul mist
rasping winds, rattling bones
here come the galloping horses
humans astride their flanks

here come the thundering clouds
breaking the world apart
the Hercules moth climbs every building
rising upwards through 110 floors

scaling the earth to find the moon
that light in the sky through which
he might escape earth’s pull
and melt into the inferno of light.