(Resemblance to any living or dead personor other is purely coincidental) When I was a kid, on the East Reservoir estateeveryone called each other’s pets by the surnameof the family. Kim ‘Meredith’ was a Labradorslobbering so much saliva pools were left at gates.His dad was a carpenter and knownfor voting Communist and had shiny chisels.Flopper … Continue reading Working Class Pacts

I should have asked my father, how it wasWhen the rest of the gun crew, unzippered by fireFrom the sky in teenage years, that should haveYawned in happy slowness, rather than a sticky messOn decks washed suddenly away in new death How it was to learn so cruelly, that time isAn enemy fighter engaged mercilessly … Continue reading Generational Loss

13 Thirteen seconds of rain fell todaysome sieve of conscienceenough to have a spider re seta filigree of spent gossamer either side the hours baked awayhardboards caked in a dust of floursetting on the Mediterranean herbsno longer happy this far south we have aged beneath hatsunwashed to bare our tanninstattoos run to veiny coursewiped clean … Continue reading One of my climate poems in the second edition of Finding My Feet an anthology of poetic voices, editor Dorothy Poulopoulos, MPU 2026. Must put it in a new book, been going around for a while.

Late March, bye-line You find yourself fallinggiving in to the last fracturethe final tease of green hairlinea grass pretence for another year Lying among the washed-out leavesEye to eye with the levelled-out day Rolling over for the smack of skythat shadow vending sun solicits with hopethe callous of dry ground veined to breakwan from summer’s … Continue reading A seasonal poem which found a home in 100 Poets Flying Islands 100th poetry collection celebration edition

https://www.themilkhouse.org/made-in-milk-and-other-poems-by-james-walton/

I start on the wing but it’s like running out on to the MCGThere’s a slight twinge in my hammy from too many church stepsI make for the centre to cut off the fast breaking anchoviesThe cheese blind turns just out of my reachThe platter seems to be getting bigger the match is tightI need … Continue reading Pizza in Lucca/ the Sporting Nemesis

Along the promenade the old grandeescast coy smiles from behind a fan of roadwayapartments now a glimpse out of folded drapeslooking down to last night’s dusting snowWhere lovers on the river path redeemthe drooping abandoned halos of early morningan after dawn held for a precious momentin a highlight fallen from a Caravaggio Miles Davis is … Continue reading Firenze Fragment

And I am sliding down the hard wall of your messageit is Christmas Day my seventy years felledthe foundling rings of life spiral slipping the cortexa speeding ticket from a front on with the floorWasn’t it only yesterday we pasted words?Their faint blossom still colours the keyboardI tried to promise Castlemaine sometime the next weeka … Continue reading Dear Rob

We thought the summer would kill us.The can opener sun so jaggedly,drained all the days tipping out,the dying pumpkin seedlings watered -soldered by early morning thereto the ground under the iron bark. The mountain will not wear the road,one day it will shake it off breaking the bridle,at the place the drays paused for passageafter … Continue reading Autumnal Refugees

Tilting Sancho, it is a time to hurrythis ochre land of sulphuris poultice to a failing queststalked by my own journeyI grow afraid these robesof castaway identity bleed Don, it is time to sit and eattake this moment of sandremember we scolded those merchantswho in the village squareput out the eyes of bullfinchesto make them … Continue reading Tilting