Ben Grummels photo

Joyce Parkes has published poetry in privileged, in progressive and in innovative literary magazines, newspapers, anthologies, in print and on-line, in Australia, England, Finland, Canada, Germany, the U.S.A. "Not Waving, Shaking" was first published in Word-Thirst, a Western Australian publication.

Monday's Poem

© Joyce Parkes


Not Waving, Shaking


Still, vast and shaking the senses,
the tarmac sustains silver flights,
over people, hungry, elsewhere,

abstemiously alive, around a
cultural catastrophe, where war
rained pure pain on children in

cities and shanties and parents
were heard to cry, help, help us
escape from these super sorties.

The grass, bearing binaries, thirsts
for water and cerebral company,
the trees (ochre leaves) beckoning.