Three Sonnets & two other new poems by James Walton

Three Sonnets

Blackberry Sonnet
The hay cutter speaks of his love

Lady, I came for your love – not to haggle.
I am no wizened mariner of orbs familiar knowledge,
But a castaway escaping the casket’s clamour –
Our years wait in your mantled hourglass beyond that door,
My journey is measured in the distance to the bed head.

Strand me not here for my bones shudder to cease and the sand runs down.
I would be Warm and Content and Yours.

Madam, I am no callow stent and lack the vigour to court these months;
The days are ours and I have not the tongue to maintain the nights as once
I climbed to masthead nests and sailed high.
Put away this doubting nunnery,
Turn the key, loose the handle and say you are mine.

How much do I love thee

How much do I love thee?
Of all the worlds matter make nought:
Scrape up the limitless sands of Arabee
Cry nil and cancel ancient debates fought,
Loose the arrow that brings doom to the phoenix.
Find the perfect seventeenth syllable
Confound and master the alchemist’s tricks,
Write down the unsaid of the embalmers table.
Love stills the breath of the living
in a landscape paused between the tick and tock,
Of the measure of time most unforgiving,
And though my tortured head be down before the axeman on the block:

Have no doubt in my most fervent answer dear
I confess it all to you alone and have no slightest fear.

If granted all the Grace of God

If granted all the Grace of God
And the charterer’s benign skill,
No end of teasing powers for this pod
Could come near to giving me my fill.
Words are unsatisfactory lovers –
They skirt the question that must be so uppermost,
Poorly they try to extend the peak of my druthers.
Love, leave the soul searching to our admirably languid host
All would be wasted on such a spindly youth.
With age comes the travailed experience of strength;
Don’t pause and be confounded by a mysterious untruth.

No plumaged cock is prouder and with all the honesty that weariness imparts
Let us wrap up the blanket sky of the Lord’s sigil to embrace our hearts.


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.James Walton was a lot of things. A librarian, a farm labourer, a cattle breeder, and mostly a public sector union organizer. He is published in many anthologies, journals, and newspapers. He is now invisible in his seventh decade.

2 Replies to “Three Sonnets & two other new poems by James Walton”

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.