hutt

Andrew Slattery is a communications graduate from Newcastle University. His poems have appeared in literary journals, magazines, radio and anthologies, including The Weekend Australian Review, Opus, Circle, Meanjin, Quadrant, Poetry Salzburg Review, Urchin, Southern Ocean Review, hutt, Moonwort Review and Black Inc's Best Australian Poems 2004. In 2004 Andrew was awarded the Harri Jones Memorial Prize for Poetry. Andrew lives in Lake Macquarie, Australia.

From your small boat, the glacier is a slab
of cloud marble, rising out of flat water.
You see that glaciers have black veins
from the windblown dirt from the creation
of layers, and as time is the shifter
of strange increments, the giddy pillar
of the glacier face spits a piff of ice
from a grey fracture line. There's a quiet boom
before a glacier breaks in a series
of markerpoints - the column of ice slides off
and disperses below the surface, causing the boat
to rise an inch or two, then drop again, and you
experience the cooling of arms.