It is very exciting to have my poem Code Red published in Eureka Street. Our words are our sabre . We need to listen to our earth.
Fire poems
- Bill Rush, Rory Harris, Collen Keating
- 13 January 2020
Selected poems
Apocalypse
It’s as though it’s suddenly turned winter,
the way the earth is covered over and the grey stretch of ash
is drawn up to its chin like a blanket.
And though it’s day, the bird-less quiet is a kind of night,
and everything we ever thought we knew has been turned upside down,
the first now last, and the last first.
— Bill Rush
landscape
This blackness
of landscape
as if a fire had
passed through
with no echo of water
in the dumb silence
there is though the fear
a sun, a ball of glow
just above a horizon
waiting for a breath
waiting for a change of wind
waiting for a cool voice
just to say something
— Rory Harris
Code red
when the sun like a cyclops rages fiery red
divots the sky in a coven of camouflage
It has no voice to plead ‘enough’
it warns us to listen …
in the myth Odysseus gathers forces
to ram the glaring monster
but be warned
this sun is not the enemy
it is air thick with ash that chokes ‘help’
amidst ember attacks and dust storms
when fish like shimmering naiads surface slimy green
float dead in display of disaster
they have no voice to gulp ‘stop’
they rely on us to think …
in the myth Naiads shine silver
in springs and streams and brooks
be warned
dead fish are not the enemy
it is our river’s way of weeping ‘save me’
over-used and desecrated
when the earth our mother is parched
her body dried and cracked
she has no voice to lament ‘code red ‘
it depends on us to act …
in the myth our mother-earth
cries for care for respect
but be warned
cracked earth is not the enemy
it is a strangled cry ‘no more to give’
exhausted and depleted
when the sea like clotted blood chokes with plastics
angry Thor thunders floods the land
it has no voice to say ‘greed does not pay’
it counts on us for action …
yet still in our great city people walk about
heads down in an eerie silence
eyes weep from the smoke
behind fake masks that filter reality
they walk unbeknown like frogs
and like frogs in the myththey are being slowly boiled alive.
— Colleen Keating
Topic tags: poetry, Bill Rush, Rory Harris, Colleen Keating
Colleen Keating is a Sydney poet. She has two published award- winning collections of poetry: A Call to Listen and Fire on Water. She is also co-editor of two anthologies on behalf oft the NSW Women Writers network.
