Umbrella
A Journal of poetry and kindred prose


Mark Allinson

grew up in Melbourne, Australia. At first he wanted to be an airline pilot and he completed a private flying licence at age 17. Before long, however, he realized that flying was merely a metaphor for his desire to rise above the pettiness of daily life, in order to see the big picture. Eventually this desire for vertical transcendence led to a Ph.D in English literature, and he taught for six years at Monash university, in Melbourne. 

Since then, Mark has been teaching adult-education courses in literature and writing and publishing poetry and essays in magazines and journals, both in print and on-line; and he recently had a chapbook of poems, Blue Glass Cities, published in New York by MM Publishing. Mark is now living and writing on the NSW coast, south of Sydney.


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Cleaving

Then came the time of fire and ice
when snow blew into the bush, aflame,
and I felt the white-hot lightning slice
that icy cloud and I lost my name.

So I was split, a man in two,
where heat and coldness met in strife;
When we made love we did not know
if you were the hot or the cold man's wife.

 

A Red-Gum Log

Hour by hour the log endured
the metamorphosis of flame,
and when its bark was burnt away
it glowed the colour of its name.
By alchemy the log became
transmogrified, crystalline;
and incandescent in its frame
pulsed rubies, bright as cherry wine.
As they shrank to discombine
in ruby cubes like crimson dice,
the log retained its size and line
then shattered into crimson ice.

 
 
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