Stuart Cooke

Border Poems

1.
People at the Bus Shelter; Raining

Trapped under the bus shelter,
the rain rushes down
around us in the thick bars of a cage,
liquid shot pummelling the pavement
from endless silver sheaths.
Some sit on the bench; most stand, our hands
kept warm in our pockets.
We are all
obsessed with this natural demarcation,
this exact, powerful enclosure of
dry pavement by a violent downpour,
this luck we seem to have stumbled upon,
to be inhabiting the last habitat
in a world apparently drowning.

From the bench of the shelter
the outside world smudges
slightly,
smudges downwards with streaks of rain
so that it would be foolish - utterly
absurd - to venture out there
(who would walk
into a world that has run like ink down a page?).

Until the bus comes
we are an enforced community.

Beveridge, Judith
Bleakley, Kathleen
Boyd, Allan
Brennan, Michael
Burns, Joanne
Cameron, Lainie
Cassidy, Bonnie
Chang, Jessica
Clarke, John
Cooke, Stuart
Crane, Michael
Dechian, Sonja
Doran, Ben
Doupe, Juliana
Drewitt, Andy
Dyson, Mia
Elson, Gerard
Ferney, Liam
Garrard, Phillipa
Gibian, Jane
Greagen, Clint
Hawkins, Brian
Hickey, Kelly-Lee
Hier, Michael
Higgs, Ashley
Jelfs, Bradley
Jenkins, Gareth
Johnson, Heather Taylor
Jones, Jill
Kefala, Antigone
Keily, Tom
Knox, Elena
Locke, Kate
Lowe, Justin
Mackie, Brendan
Mann, Paddy
Messiah, Eytan
Minter, Peter
Mitchell, Paul
Morganics
Narkiewicz, Katrine
Nicholson, Anna Kerdijk
Nixon, Jenni
Oliver, Stephen
Paine, Juliet
Prater, David
Purchess, Andew
Robbins, Rachel
Scott, Ryan
Smart, Steve
Sinclair, Tim
Sometimes, Alicia
Stavanger, David
Stuart, James
Tsaloumas, Dimitris
Walter, Lesley
Webster, Ben
West, John
Westbury, Deb
Wicks, Les
Winch, Ben