GAS Featured Poet: Doug Jacquier

 

 Doug Jacquier has lived in many places across Australia, including regional and remote communities, and has travelled extensively overseas. His poems and stories have been published in Australia, the US, the UK and Canada. He blogs at Six Crooked Highways. For readers prepared to come along for the ride, he likes to make them laugh or cry or groan and, occasionally, shake their electronic fists at him. 

Carried on the wind

 

Sounds carry on the wind,

carry in the wind,

sometimes are the wind,

deafening the soul.

 

Sand carries on the wind,

in the wind

and sometimes is the wind,

stripping the paint.

 

Tears carry on the wind,

in the wind

and sometimes are the wind,

spreading desert rain.

 

Hope carries on the wind,

in the wind,

and sometimes is the wind

of whispered prayers.

 

Tomorrow carries on the wind,

in the wind

and sometimes is the wind

of soaring birds.

 

Writing carries on the wind,

in the wind

and sometimes is the wind

of Heaven.

Reflections

 

For you and for me,

all things seem possible when we look across blue water

from the solid shore.

Peering towards the horizon,

we conspire towards a thousand buoyant courses.

 

Imagining a receding shore and a rising tide,

we do not weigh our stamina against the undertow

nor the wind strength against our craft;

we have enough gods

to warrant speculation.

 

But there are those who stand upon the solid shore

who are already at the end of this world

(and the next)

and our imagined journeys

are their fated drownings.

 

For them,

as they squint anxiously across the water

imagining a receding shore and a rising tide,

sailing into the blue

seems a truly godless journey.

 

So they sit watching us,

like hermit crabs,

waiting for us to set out,

assuming we are unlikely to return,

and picturing life inside our empty shells.