SAMPLE POEMS

Below you can read a small sample of poems from Luke Fischer's book Paths of Flight (North Fitzroy, VIC: Black Pepper, 2013). Paths of Flight can be purchased through the publisher and delivered internationally free of charge:

Grasshopper in a Field

Who took the young thin stems
and bent them to be your legs,
folded leaves like origami
to make a pair of wings?
I found you:
a green ear of wheat
mounting a stalk,
a walking plant,
self-enclosed, unbound from the soil,
early sentience
at home in your hall of mirrors.


"Grasshopper in a Field" appears on page 17 of Paths of Flight and was first published in Antipodes (USA).

Band of Cockatoos

The white of their plumage
seems a bit too white like
the polished teeth of salesmen

or the glare of the sheet
on which I jot
these observations

though they remind me of children
as they quietly collect
twigs and leaves

from around the path.
Now and then they reveal
the wattle in their underwings

and open their gravel beaks
like rusty doors
but suddenly the lead

alights and hops along
a broken branch, flares
his pineapple Mohawk

while banging his head,
rends his jacket and insists
the members scatter

to the surrounding tiers
where they join
in a punk-rock cacophony.

I hasten from the rally
push the scribbly paper
into a pocket.

Across the valley I spot them
vandalising
their angophora houses.


"Band of Cockatoos" appears on page 22 of Paths of Flight and was first published in Meanjin.

Syrian Desert
I walk off alone
through the hot winds
that flap my clothes
like the broken sail of a dhow
beaten by storms on the Red Sea,
across the ochre sands and scattered rocks
and past the caves where desert fathers
once dwelled and prayed.
My eyes settle  
before the calm expanse,
trace the subtle gradation of hues
and up ahead I see a man
cloaked in the winds;
his face is dry and cracked
yet tilled by the work
of renunciation––from
its furrows rise vast trees
abundant with flowers
and gliding the blazing gusts
firebirds alight in their branches.


"Syrian Desert" appears on page 44 of Paths of Flight.

Flamenco Trio

Granada
An old man sits at the rear of a dusky cavern,
dressed in a suit and hot pink tie. He listens intently
to the dexterous fingerwork of the young guitarist on his left,
mining with his ears for something that might appear

behind the notes. Every now and then he claps and rubs
his thick hands together, as if warming them before a fire.
As an earthquake sends tremors through the earth, his mouth
sends a wail through the walls––like a Tibetan chant

or the clang of a gong––summoning
oscillations that first made stone, stone.
The man to his right is roused like a giant
from sleep. Towering over a half-created world

he raises his arms, greets the morning sun.
Kyanite eyes peer down into a crystalline earth
and he stamps out countless valleys.
The guitarist continues to strum,

fans a breeze through summer fields
into the chamber where we sit:
hearing the scents of wild flowers
that open in the night.


"Flamenco Trio" appears on page 34 of Paths of Flight.
Here is a link to the poem 'Augury?' (included in Paths of Flight among other poems relating to Greece, and winner of the Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize): 'Augury?'

A few more sample poems as well as some reviews of the book can be found on the Black Pepper website: http://blackpepperpublishing.com/fischerpof.html