POETRY

Collaborative Visual Poem: GREEN .... John Ley et al

Collaborative Visual Poem: GREYISH .... John Ley et al

Collaborative Visual Poem: PINKISH .... John Ley et al

                  Nothing exists in isolation

                  There is no ocean

                  Without the shore

                  A bird, is not a bird

                  Without the sky

                  Never a circle

                  Without the •

COUNTRY TOWN ECOLOGY

As I sit at my computer,

The anguished bellows of sale yard cows

Temper the night breeze, impermanent.

The finality of life.

Not just coming slaughter.

Not just the suffering.

More than this. 

Listened to closely, en masse

The cows’ wails become harmonic

Like the chant of Tibetan monks,

Guttural,

Dense, beyond comprehension.

Foreign.

Many townspeople wish the yards were moved.

Not me. That would be tragic.

Another loss of collective memory.

Memory of what we have done to this land.

Memory of how we are here.

How we are borne of  beast domestication.

Evolved.

Become city oriented.

Now animal protein comes in polystyrene

The local butcher is a threatened species.

Fewer and fewer of the world’s

Industrialised citizens

Will ever know

This saleyard hymn to civilisation.

Listen.