Water on Rock, Wind in Trees - by Pete Hay

Poetry
Written By Pete Hay
ISLAND | ISSUE 158
francesco-ungaro-ZwdK1xtytgQ-unsplash (1).jpg

I rose at dawn to tread the shore.
Truckling water on rock
was the only sound I heard.
The old earth frets, I thought,
it will be another earth within the moment.
This small voice of water
is the earth’s pure sound.

I walked within night
to the casuarina grove.
A wind came, a dry rattle
in the trees’ jointed skirts.
It rose, the wind,
a thin voice of elemental grief,
the earth’s pure sound. ▼

Photo by Francesco Ungaro on Unsplash

This poem appeared in Island 158 in 2020. Order a print issue here.

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Pete Hay

Pete Hay is the author of a number of works of poetry, essays and scholarship, including Physick, the poet/painter collaborative work Last Days at the Mill, the chapbook Girl Reading Lorca, essay collections Vandiemonian Essays (he is a passionate Vandiemonian) and Forgotten Corners, academic texts, and a writer/ photographer collaboration (The Forests).

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