Published in Overland Issue 203 Winter 2011 · Main Posts and day breaks Judy Durrant fell from sky mimed milk-orange silk caught fast behind silver surface underbelly a soft feather boat landed with crept-up leak sloe eye slunk in a deep like marching candlestick ripple-wake sprung certainty tiny gum nut pinged a bull’s eye’s circling ever widening rings the bridge lights arched a brighter orange than a carp’s gulp unfolding cut-out paper stretched out bunting that dawn pulls down and so it goes you see a profile silhouette afloat liquid pearl art nouveau frieze so sharp black and still you can’t be sure if it’s weeping leaves’ cameo too crisp to be a bright fire’s morning embers grown lizard-skinned to velvet-grey in dust all you know is that upright sturdy-trunked a shadow however rorschach blot however real it has you blinking twice is not but fugue overlaying orange-silk cloud neck to bob empty brown bottle cormorant bellowing from mute depth risen glistening snake and an indistinct path we stride head down gathering wilding dusk strewn with buff-sickle moon scything boomerang with sand glistering diamond miniscule day-after crumb scattered shining harder in our hand as red stars before they combust while raging stars drown out sundown racket deafening our voice and a higher canopy arcing siren invisible to our dulled eyes hones feathered bones’ squawking and shrieking inhabits hollows dark keening ache meshes lost nights days breaking one unto the other This poem was runner-up in the 2010 Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize for New and Emerging Poets, sponsored by the Malcolm Robertson Foundation. Judy Durrant Judy Durrant is a runner-up in the 2010 Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize for New and Emerging Poets, sponsored by the Malcolm Robertson Foundation. She has a BA from Monash University and lives in Benalla. Recent publications include poems in Blue Dog and The Age. Her first poetry book, Arsey Triage, is on the cusp of completion. More by Judy Durrant › Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays 28 March 20249 April 2024 · Main Posts Why we should value not only lived experience, but also lived expertise Sukhmani Khorana In the wake of this year’s International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, I want to extend the central idea of El Gibbs’s 2022 essay on 'lived expertise' and argue that in media accounts of racism, analytical expertise and lived experience ought to be valued together and even in the same body. 5 March 2024 · Main Posts Andrew Charlton’s school assignment Alex McKinnon Australia's Pivot to India exists for three reasons: so that when Andrew Charlton is interviewed on the radio or introduced on Q+A, his bio includes the phrase "he has written a book about Indian-Australian relations"; to fend off accusations that he is another Kristina Keneally engaging in electoral colonialism in western Sydney; and to help the Albanese government strengthen economic and military ties with Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.
