BuiltWithNOF
Mike Ladd

The Pacific

Words bloom tropic red on the highway,
its divided dusk.
Colours blur in the laden air.
Promises of escape and latter years
of softer winters;
the exotic dumps
Calypso Court, Hibiscus Lodge,
and Ocean Vistas with no view of the sea.

Now snake through Tabbimoble,
the lay-off forests,
overflow of Brisbane-Sydney
pouring back and forth.
Bus-ghosts in the fields of red-tinged grass,
ghosts in the overtaking lanes,
in the switchbacks, the Taree bypass,
ghosts in the Bundjalung names.

Smell of salt and big rivers
and the world turning green,
even in the dark.

 

About the Poet
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Mike Ladd is a poet, radio playwright and broadcaster who lives in Adelaide, South Australia. His first book of poems The Crack in the Crib was published in 1984. This was followed by Picture’s Edge in 1994 and Close to Home in 2000. He was born in Berkeley, California in 1959. After studying philosophy and English at Adelaide University he became the singer and lyricist of the Adelaide punk band The Lounge. He then travelled in Africa, recording the traditional poet praise-singers known as les griot. For the last twenty years since returning to Australia he has been recording, directing and producing radio dramas, documentaries and poetry features for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. He is currently presenter and producer of PoeticA on Radio National. His new book of poems and short stories, Rooms and Sequences was published by Salt Press in 2003.