Stuart Barnes' poems have been shortlisted for major Australian prizes & published at online & in print journals & newspapers including Mascara Literary Review, The Warwick Review & The Weekend Australian Review; others are forthcoming at Otoliths, in fourW twenty-three & Blasphemy. 'Mother and Son', creative nonfiction about his coming out, can be read at Verity La (http://verityla.com/mother-and-son-stuart-barnes/).
He edits PASH capsule (http://www.facebook.com/pashcapsule), a magazine of love poetry, & is working on the manuscript for his first book of poetry. Currently he lives in Melbourne, Australia.

Stuart Barnes

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The Sea Anemones

in memory of Gwen Harwood,
who encouraged the eleven-year-old
me to write poetry

after her poem of the same name

 

• Grey mountains, sea and sky.
•  Even 
• the misty

• seawind is grey. I walk on lichened rock

• in a kind of 
• late assessment, call it
•  peace
• .

• Then
•  the 
• anemones, scarlet, gouts of blood.

• There is a word I need, and earth was speaking.

• I cannot hear. The
•  seaflowers are too bright.

• Kneeling on rock,
•  I touch 
• them through cold water.

• My fingers meet some
•  hungering 
• gentleness.

• A newborn child's
•  lips 
• moved so at my breast
• .

• I woke, once, with my palm across your mouth.

• The word is: ever.
•  Why add salt to salt?

•  Blood 
• drop by drop
•  among 
• the
•  rocks they shine.

•  
• Anemos, wind. The spirit, where it will.

• Not flowers, no, animals that must 
• eat or
•  die.