from OCCUPATIONS
by Stephen Oliver
77.
All roads lead to Boot hill; all roads lead
to the charnel-house; all roads lead to the bone
yard; down cemetery road literary guns from
the legendary past went herding a cumulus cloud:
Zane Grey, Hemingway and Roy Campbell.
78.
At Blackheath, lightning whangs onto the
escarpment like a hammer to anvil, sub-stations
of cloud shorting out along the Great Dividing
Range, sheeting ravines and undiscovered foliage,
each airy gust packed as full as a warehouse.
79.
Hills fold darkly as curtained partitions,
the pine-trees sprinkled with city lights through
this - and you are leading me out amongst
the vertical folds of a dreamscape - indistinct,
yet the mood is one of gravity or yearning.
80.
O how picturesque the country roads!
village folk fleeing, bare trees, snow patches,
the wounded, the stragglers, children who
cry at mortar and tank fire - even refugees with
Adidas T-shirts and runners die as quick.
STEPHEN OLIVER is the author of twelve books of poetry, including: Night of Warehouses: Poems 1978-2000, Deadly Pollen, and Ballads, Satire & Salt - A Book of Diversions. His work will appear in: 3 AM Magazine, The Bridge, Fire Magazine, Milk, Monkey Bicycle, Word for/Word, Paumanok Review, Rearview Quarterly, Sidereality, Tin Lustre Mobile. Originally from Brooklyn-west, Wellington, New Zealand, Stephen now lives in Sydney. See: Stephen Oliver's interview with Will Roby in Word Riot http://www.wordriot.org <http://www.wordriot.org/> . His website: http://people.smartchat.net.au/~sao/