Apocalyptic Flood by Gary Aro Ruble
John Stokes
Cooktown, 600 hrs E.S.T
Light coming in to Furneaux Street…
And a thousand years away, up-Cape,
a cyclone is turning an ocean over:
it is blowing down the rude fruit at the airport
it is blowing down the black flowers in the mangroves
Coral trees are falling on the clansmen
drunk with nicotine and alcohol and diesel
flooding in from the tropics, bringing the news
of cobbled mountains, dark with air
And here the sea-wash, gravel spumed
fleshes as the compass goes down under
a slattern continent of rubbed water:
the reef slashed in lubra colours
Salt graves, green fires
clubbed names springing from the ironwood
a mouth-river gaped and spreading
Cook cursing on the wind.
Bio:
John Stokes is an Australian poet and short-story-writer. His work has been widely published in Australia and the USA. He is interested in how our emotions shape the world, how poetry has speeded up these last centuries, and how we are all learning to survive in the country beyond love. His latest book about such things, called A River in the Dark; songs from the edge of the water, is to be published in 2003.
