Night Sky & Master Stock
This week’s Poet’s Corner contributions are from Peter Roberts.
Night Sky
On a clear evening
star’s pregnant light
radiates – born centuries ago,
the dust of huge nebula condensed,
then exploding – dust to dust,
paleo postcard – nothing is lost.
Yet I have no recollection
of Hannibal’s elephant’s traversing
glacial drifts or blitzkrieg panzers
rolling toward Warsaw or when I
first became aware of myself.
The light never retires nor
is extinguished – conspicuous
when overcast, like memories
obscured.
Master Stock
Stripped of all my artifice
I am, at best, a collection
of stories, wild tales, yarns –
some joyous, some sad, some
instructive. If I am eventually
to be silenced, voice less, mute –
then for now I will share them
with you and you will share
yours also and we will become
part of both and they will be
interwoven and inseparable
like a Chinese master stock
that constantly receives and
imparts flavour and ages with
a complexity of taste only
arrived at with an endless
list of contributors.
Peter Roberts lives in Melbourne. He enjoys poetry “that bounces and surprises, and that most of all is accessible”. He has been published in a range of national and international journals, most recently W-Poesis, Catchment and The Beatnik Cowboy, and is currently poet-in-residence at the Louis Joel Arts Centre in Hobson Bay, West Melbourne, where among other things, he produces a monthly podcast titled Louis Joel Poetry Pod, released on each full moon on Spotify.