Natural Light

In this, David Atkinson's third collection, his poetry explores the complexities of the human condition, the delights of our flora and fauna, the lost charms of the rural world he knew as a child and the rewards and challenges of family life. With an acute lyrical touch and an unerring ability to evoke sights, sounds and sensations, David's poems reveal new depths upon every rereading. His poems have achieved success in numerous competitions and have been published widely in Australia, the USA and the UK.

Table of Contents:
Contents The Scaffold of Time 1 The Old Hume 3 Yabbying 5 Generations of Ritual 7 The Frets of Time 8 Verandah 9 A Redolent Revival 10 West of Dubbo 11 Evenings of Moths 13 Debriefing 15 Bow Wave 17 Severed 19 The Puzzles of Memory 21 Apprentice Advocate 23 Flanks and Fetlocks 25 Route 66 27 Sonnet of the Fire 29 Accumulated Letters 30 Sonnet Set in Time 31 Upswept Wings 33 Gang-gang 35 The Plague Paradigm 37 The Cost of Commitment 39 Place and Time 41 Wedge-tailed Eagle 43 Deprivation 45 Superb Fairy-wrens 47 Searching the Storm 48 Escape from the Ploughshare 49 Musk Lorikeet in the Time of Covid 51 Assembly Machinations 53 Sonnet for the Kookaburra 55 The Ambivalence of Organisms 56 Anchored 57 From Impermanence 59 Above the Abyss 60 The Break from Simplicity 61 Yackandandah Autumn 62 The Surging Pipe 63 Competition Essay 65 Country Show 67 The Challenge of Algebra 69 Theatre Conjectures 71 The Sweet Science 73 Journal of Days on the Grader 75 The Fettler’s Chronicle 77 Dead Tree Drive 79 After the Bombs 80 Anniversary 81 Beyond Statistics 83 The Ochre of Dawn 85 The Buoyancy of Butterflies 87 Whipcord 89 Seasonal Cycle 90 Stymied 91 The Drift of the Tide 92 Journey to Lampshaded Blades 93 Parisian Clivia 97 Morning Sequence 98 Directions for the Trek 99 Spectrums of Sound 101 Light on the Breeze 103 The Ambivalence of the Night 105 Scale 107 Adrift in the Desert 108 Unanswered 109 Phone Frisson 110 Dredge 111 Library Books 113 Knives 115 The Aggression of Muhammad Ali 116 Interwoven 117 The Thumping Tumbler 119 Interwoven 120 Flashback to Forster 121 Drifting Waters 123 Legacy 125 Cerebral Squalls 126 Villanelle of the Drought 127 Of Owl and Eeyore 128 Flannel Flowers 129 Two Quarters 130 Locked Down 131 Flight Paths of Dreams 133 Tremulous Quiver 134 Protective Pinny 135 For Isla 137

About the Author :
David Atkinson is a retired lawyer who lives in Sydney. This is his third poetry collection following The Ablation of Time (2018) and Strands and Ripples (2021). David's favoured areas for poetic exploration include memory, the human condition and the natural world