Journal

John Kinsella

     So gnarl, press on,

     not weaken befores or afters,

  make haven in waste, gazette

     extinctual scan as chips

  off older blocks — riverviews

  unbecome a surge of ghosts in trunks,

blotch of scruples in canopy, sky

     as blue as eyes

     streaked white once were —

  glowing finance of our backers,

     corrugated Knights Templar,

  mountless roughriders, press on

  in khaki flow, jut-jaw belligerence,

as declared — scientific — garrulous

     it is said of us,

     heroicise our brutals?

  Alone, trudging solipsists, grace

     and glide arterials, ford the aura

  silted bed, mirror narratives flat, press on,

  reflectionless, prised of shadow, waver

in flesh: let them come on, and on,

     shoulder arms, fall

     divided where wagons

  fail to circle — no fear! unslung

     metal backbone, shudder

  riparian swathes of pollen,

  our drive to mine a visage: seams

of fauna riven deep to characters. Press on.

John Kinsella (WA) is a poet whose most recent volumes of poetry includes America: A Poem. His poetics volume Disclosed Poetics: Beyond Landscape and Lyricism will be published in June 2007.

Journal was written by John Kinsella in response to Albert Tucker’s Explorers fording the river 1958 in the Newcastle Region Art Gallery collection.