Poem: The Advent of Colour

The Advent of Colour

That moment thirty minutes before dawn.

My view from the window, upstairs eyrie,

is of the shades and tone of tar,

an incomplete world.

In the grevillea, its distinctive leafage

of spiky sprigs, a silhouette of a bird.

With no other visual hints, it bounds

and bounces from branch to bough.

At daybreak sunlight splays upon

the shrub, the flush of first light

on a crimson rosella, an evocation

of all no longer concealed.

The creature has severed a comb

of native blossom. Red and blue

unite with the yellow until the utility

of the bloom as food is spent,

discarded onto the turf of green.

The revelation of morning

as the colours are conceived afresh,

a spectrum of luminance.

David Atkinson lives in Sydney. His poems have been published widely in Australia, the US and UK. Awards include first prizes in the Ros Spencer Poetry Prize, the FAW Jean Stone Poetry Award, and the Whitsunday Poetry Prize. He has published three collections: The Ablation of Time in 2018, Strands and Ripples in 2021, Natural Light in 2024, and he convenes the Pennant Hills Poets workshop group in Sydney. ‘Memory, the human condition, and the natural world’, are cornerstones of David’s poetry, and more can be found at www.davidatkinson.com.au.

Readers’ original and unpublished poems of up to 40 lines can be emailed, with postal address, to [email protected]. Submissions should be in the body of the email, not as attachments. A poetry book will be awarded to each accepted contributor.