Greater than gravity
Rachael Mead (University of Adelaide, Australia)
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This valley is the poem I dream of writing
its dams and creeks reflecting
all that I cannot; stars, peeling trees
the endless flux of light and wind.
Under my feet it lies, unresistant
yet forever slipping my grasp
holding me with a power
greater than gravity.
I try, lying in wait
under the worn path of sun
the swivel of stars
but while this page is of the earth, the trees
my words fail, no true reflection
its essence as pervading yet elusive as air.
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Rachael Mead is a Ph.D student at the University of Adelaide. She has just had a short collection of poetry Sliding down the belly of the world published in New Poets 17 by Wakefield Press and her full length work The Sixth Creek was shortlisted in the Adelaide Festival Literature Awards for an unpublished manuscript. In 2011 she was awarded the Dorothy Hewett Flagship Fellowship Fellowship for Poetry.
