This piece, over twenty years old, came to me largely in a dream about being a poet.

 

Adamson Adrift

We sat on the wharf at East Balmain,

where the ferries make the Harbour

never still,

 

and Robert Adamson floated away

with grace on the violent tide,

as we looked on the streams

of the living

(as in air, we were in motion)

 

and in action, and relative calm

which, in age, is indifference;

 

as flying and colour, and childhood,

and Schweitzer's image

of the fall of snow on blossoming trees

 

is clean purity,

pelucid transparency

in the dark cathedral,

 

and as water music of magpies

when Summer springs

surprises,

 

and as Hart Crane soars in the wake

above his Caribbean home,

We looked on the streams of the living.

 

Chris Hubbard. Perth, 1995