One year I grew Navajo maize by James Walton

One year I grew Navajo maize

kernels of a jeweller’s dream
sacred as the psalms of Solomon,
when the waking day rippled

they shone louder than hearsay,
of a pain so bewildering and lost
the sheathes sobbed a melancholy

and all season by broken night
the thud of other falling fruit,
made steps outside of conscience.

Within my pawn shopped love
is too solemn a precipice,
a girder in cantilever out over

an empty gallery hanging space,
where bricks slowly isolate
the sound of a facade crashing,

but those hesitant frontiers cling
their plating portraits hidden,
hopeful as a seed between lips.


James Walton
is an Australian poet published in newspapers, and many journals, and anthologies. Short listed twice for the ACU National Literature Prize, a double prize winner in the MPU International Poetry Prize, Specially Commended in The Welsh Poetry Competition – his collection ‘The Leviathan’s Apprentice’ was published in 2015.

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