SurVision Magazine

Sliver of Australian Summer


Salmon-runneled thoughts
cross the mind of blue sky,
the loveliness of moment,
moon part-melted,
smell of water from a paddock
below the wind turbine
shocked still by heat.
 
Ardent evening stills with cicada song,
asphalt molten, a swelter of viscous past,
bridges and railings scorched bone-white,
rim sand rusting in the late-light. 
 
Dragonflies herringbone the dusk
too heat-weary to mate, frenzy sucked dry
 
Car windows down you think
air-con too distancing,
strappy summer dress hunched up
and the draft past from the speed
blowing kisses on your neck, upper back,
bare except for the incandescent stroke of day.






Robyn Rowland lives in both Australia and Connemara, Ireland, and also regularly works in Turkey. She has published twelve books, nine of poetry, the latest being Line of Drift (Doire Press, Ireland, 2015). Her poems appeared in national and international journals and in over forty anthologies, including eight editions of Best Australian Poems.