Sometimes, inspiration and imagination have strange effects.

 

De Jeune

 

Swallows dive, swoon

like wind-swayed ink drops

down, and beyond the light:

 

swallowed by the sky,

flown blue, over

road-birds – honed

by simple flight.

 

Like arrows in Canada

in thunderhead afternoons:

clouds rolling, rutting hinds

in migration, pounding sand-trails,

pulsing ozone heat mirage;

 

running the burning drifters down

in Autumn sleet

to De Jeune,

waiting in the wheat haze;

 

dizzying with prospects of hail

on harvests of dust,

headers lash at cumulo-nimbus

flat against the round horizon:

 

as the gaze returns

to the eyes – in the smile

of De Jeune, steel and willow,

waiting in the wheat haze.

 

Chris Hubbard. Perth, 1995