It’s been a wet, green June,
the sky a windswept scudding grey,
so filtered dim, so different from
the dry, bright Australian summers
with piled-up heat and blinding glare
I dreamed and sweated through.
Sometimes the pavements on the sloping
street outside become surges of water —
little rivers disappearing downhill —
and waterlogged trees drop branches on cars.
I try to gather scattered thoughts
before they are washed away.
Nothing holds. It’s raining on the inside
too: trickles and rivulets going where?
A rotund beaver visits the overgrown
back garden once, twice, scurrying
purposefully, busy on personal business.
We’ve never seen him before
and there is no river nearby
but he seems at home, toothily content,
on grey scudding days like this,
when I am a sodden stranger to myself.
− David Adès
David Adès is an Australian poet currently living in Shadyside. He has been a member of Friendly Street Poets since 1979. His collection Mapping the World was commended for the Anne Elder Award 2008. A chapbook, Only the Questions Are Eternal, is forthcoming from Garron Publishing in 2015. In 2014, he won the inaugural University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor’s International Poetry Prize and was shortlisted for the Newcastle Poetry Prize. Many writers featured in Chapter & Verse are guests of Prosody, produced by Jan Beatty and Ellen Wadey. Prosody airs every Saturday morning on WESA 90.5 FM.
