A Most Urgent Task

By Derek Baines

Taking us across culture and landscapes and evoking other states, Derek Baines’s new collection touches raw nerves and brings humour to some of our most challenging experiences. A lone traveller enjoys hospitality at an ancient Japanese inn, an insomniac artist produces a masterwork from his subconscious, and a marathon runner moves out of

• Language: English
• Publisher: Debbie Lee
• Release date: Oct 19, 2016
• ISBN: 9781760412265

Book preview

A Most Urgent Task

A Most Urgent Task

Derek Baines

Ginninderra Press

Contents

A Most Urgent Task

Acknowledgements

A Most Urgent Task

ISBN 978 1 76041 226 5

Copyright © text Derek Baines 2012

Cover image: Bradd Westmoreland, Small Blue Portrait, 2009, oil on canvas, 20.5 x 25.5 cm; courtesy the artist and Gallery 9, Sydney

---

All rights reserved. No part of this ebook may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the copyright holder. Requests for permission should be sent to the publisher at the address below.

---

First published 2012

Reprinted 2016

---

Ginninderra Press

PO Box 3461 Port Adelaide SA 5015

www.ginninderrapress.com.au

For Margaret Baines

A Most Urgent Task

Peeling a Mandarin

---

A mesh bag of mandarins,

sealed with a bow of string,

purchased from the fruit-seller

at the weekly produce market

---

In my right palm

I hold like a baseball the cool orange fruit

which will quench my thirst

or be a dry disappointment to over-ready senses.

---

I am right-handed but use my left thumb

to dig in,

stopping in time to prevent penetration

of the segments within

and a disastrous spillage of juice.

---

Perfect skin, unblemished like an infant’s,

is not too thin as to be