Gregory Day’s Southsightedness is an intimate collection of poetry in which he celebrates the ongoing wonders of the earth and sea while calling time on the superficial divisions we have created between ideas of nature and culture.

Here are two poems from the book for you to enjoy.

Sister Light

Wind braids the grass & combs the hides

of herefords standing or reclining in clods.

In the foreshortening view rusted rivertrees

with pines create a welcome belt.

Under the bruised sky over the metal road

farm fencewires zing, guitars hang on silent nails.

The rain tunes out and in, greening single bowsers,

printing the world with tattoos of weather.

Rounding a long bend, eyelids almost touching

I see a light-filled wetland, peering through the glare.

Adrift in the glitter, windscreen shining

I hear an ancient chorus singing in the sky.

Suddenly I’m in yearning, for my sister to come back

to tour with me at last these swan-dotted soaks.

The birds sound her return and my eyes

swing from the road toward the centre of their song.

The whole wetland fills, tilts on its side, pours open

drenching the empty passenger seat in light.

**********

Know A River

Know a river

any river

but know a river.

Know that life passes

at the river’s pace

that staunch limbs

get snagged till they twist

and easy lissome fronds

go floating seaward.

Know a river’s justice.

Know that borders never last

that energy laps and erodes

kisses and flows,

that even dry banks

try to tumble towards god.

Know that it takes

all sorts to make a river:

busy insects, gawky birds,

cluey fish & deeply migratory dust,

parsimonious eels, old-man traps,

sky-mirror and rippling wake,

just as the winter-into-spring

often turns a river to a lake.

Know photos of a river

know sedge

know it in a boat

know its scent from some way off.

Know that life’s tempo

scythes through moments

of hot and cold

that deepest down is coolest

that shiny rivertops perform

the magic tricks of this world.

Know what it is

to sit & cry into a river

adding yours to its
as water draws grief

like a bucket at a well.

Know its wild boyhood too

its jetty planks when baking hot

and cypress cubbys

where your desire caught fire

where it flows and cascades.

The river knows

nothing lasts forever

forever passes like the weather

things flash on the scales of skin

and seep houseward.

All longing is natural.

Remember as a kid

the affinities you felt

with tea-coloured streams

and glittering reaches

how a river was your sister

the perfect listener,

and make it so once more

to solve the drought in loneliness.

Go about life

with the river

and its sibilant whisper

so that moments

hours & days

can sow your moody spirit-fields

with tides and currents

with winds that teach you

the ephemera of knowing.

**********

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gregory Day is a writer and musician from the west coast of Victoria, Australia.

He lives on Wadawurrung tabayl. Gregory is a winner of the Patrick White Award, the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal and the Nature Conservancy Australia Nature Writing Prize.

He has twice been shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award, most recently in 2024 for The Bell of the World.

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