Sushumna Jam by Gary Aro Ruble
Peter Goldsworthy
Descartes at Bell's Beach
In the tumbling rough
beyond the crumbling edges
of the great white sea,
there is the rock
and roll of heavy water,
amplified against the drumskins
of the mind and body
as if against a single drum.
Out there the world is wild and sonic,
my eyes are ears, my mouth
an ear, my jostled limbs
four tiny bones inside
a common ear, transmitting
sound, buffeting white noise
against the tight stretched inner skin
until, abruptly, from the past,
the lick of earth: a mother¹s
rough sandpaper tongue,
and from the debris
of another highrise wave
collapsed expertly on itself,
I emerge, at last, on absent legs,
wearing nothing, not even
my own deafened skin,
numbed until the world
begins to creep back in
dividing self and body
into problems: bruised
shoulders, power-sanded
knees, salt-stung eyes,
and somewhere deep within,
the tiny mind,
straining once again
to hear the glow of cold.
Bio:
Peter Goldsworthy grew up in various Australian country towns finishing his schooling in Darwin in the Northern Territory. Since graduating in medicine from the University of Adelaide, he has divided his working time between general practice and writing. His novels have sold more than a quarter of a million copies in Australia, and have been translated into many European and Asian languages. His first novel Maestro has just been reissued as part of the Angus & Robertson Australian Classics series. It is currently in development as a movie. Among his numerous literary awards are the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, and the Australian Bicentennial Literary Prize for Poetry in 1988. His New Selected Poems has recently been published in Australia and the UK; his Collected Stories will be published in both countries next year. To learn more, visit his website.
