Last year’s floods surged salt

up the Yare and spilled through here.

 

I counted the starved, decaying pike

surfaced by so many losses.

 

Now I look for migrants

and while I scan you read to me –

 

abundance of mallard, greylag,

the pure-white belligerence of swans.

 

A tern holds before its drop;

that deadfall,

 

re-emergence and rough dividend

of too-small silver flailing.

 

You are reading now of the lapwing,

the curved crest, that joyful cry,

 

of all its resident names: green plover,

pewit, pie-wipe, lappinch, chewit;

 

such fresh-water in your migrant mouth.

a penumbral eclipse that’s what they call it

that mix of shadow and light shade hidden

as if we are viewers at some entertainment

for tourists this is not the Egyptian pyramids

at Giza whose azimuth was calculated along the

desert plains no something even more humble

an Australian beach a seashore where the tide

sweeps in under the glimmering full moon

we will be in full umbra night’s shadow

and unable to see the penumbra of moonlight

our azimuth will not angle us to this eclipse

Why be afraid.

Signs everywhere,

A fallen bird,

the dead bugs

in yellow grass,

nothing remains.

Schoolchildren watch things pass,

no questions.

Before these houses

filled the hills

we knew

no pain

grandparents tending the garden.

Or, before time,

chaos modulated into

civilising climate change,

what had we

to worry.

Our hills

shone with forests,

cycads were fountains.

Or, closer to home

ego arguments

divided continents

along state lines,

empire meant

oppressor and oppressed,

everyone slave

to an illusion.

What of it?

We observe the shifts

on colour screens.

But answers

to our fear

the gouging pain

and grudging antidotes,

after all

what can they be?

We will leave too

and feel no more

like all before,

unremembered remembered.

(Walking Katoomba to Mittagong)

for Alan Wearne

 

Their parents gone, we start

gathering around, the line

of a fortnight’s challenge-by-choice measured

in meals and scroggin, socks, blister-packs, fuel.

We allocate the group gear – bivvy sheets, billy can

and tarp – adjust our packs, compare

their weight. Studying maps one

more time and, measuring the route

(touch wood) set out.

Cliff Drive to Glen Raphael’s and Narrow Neck Plateau

where morning mist is spilling over

swampy heaths and packed pygmy-

eucalypts bottlenecking our postcard scenes.

Like marauding gang gang cockatoos

the kids start frivolous: Let’s napalm

these trees and snatch a view. We walk

into sclerophyll, the odd face

of sandstone and shale too sheer

for growth; the richer green

of watercourses and east-facing walls.

I look at maps, orientating my high spirits, teaching

navigation basics and joking: Into this measured beauty

as we soar … and it’s Chrissy cutting in:

C’mon ‘Corridor’, while rescue choppers circle

we’ll just bush-bash lost all day.

 

At last the end of Narrow Neck

and we climb the cliff line, down

to Medlow Gap and two hours more

to the Mob’s Swamp cave, our camp.

What bastard promised this would be our ‘easy’ day?

With sugar levels low, the careless

push for camp fractures certain tempers

so amidst some cranky laughter I readdress the rules,

motivating our final effort when freed of packs,

a coffee and a freeze-dried meal will make

the relief of conversation around

the fire at night, before the luxury

of an overhang’s dirt floor,

the Milky Way and the full moon lighting

its veneer outside.

 

We wake at dawn, or thereabouts,

a cold fog in the casuarinas

outside. Breaking camp a little later

than I might have liked we look

at maps, measuring the angles

of our route and set to climb

Warrigal Gap; contouring round

the western edge of Merrimerrigal

we traverse Mt Dingo to the Bushwalkers’

War Memorial – Splendour Rock.

Lunching with views of the days

ahead – the Cox’s Gorge, the Gangerang Ranges

to Kanangra Walls – a grasstree – Xanthorrhoea australis –

high on conglomerate rock collects

our attention like regimental colours

and provokes Smithy: Come off it Phil, it’s a blackboy,

a spear throwing blackfella, quick, let’s souvenir the shaft.

I sweet-talk the group with the adventure

of bush tucker and craft, a one plant supermarket:

spears, fire sticks, sugar, grubs and glue –

You think this is wilderness. It’s ‘Country’.

 

Readying for a long afternoon’s

steep descent past fruiting geebungs,

gums and sarsaparilla, turpentine, stringybark

and angophora, I keep the strugglers

near the front, sharing the navigating;

the distraction and group momentum carrying them.

On chocolate breaks the sugar gliders crash

in wonder; I look to trees, withdrawing, while drinking water.

Our way soon brings us to stands of blue gum,

with that aromatic eucalyptus trait and towering

marble columns peeling rough dark bark

at their bases: Ah, the stockinged pillars of Rivendell.

But, Shut-up ‘Corridor’, it’s Boaty chipping in, forget

the view, we’re scratched and tired. Yet as packs hit

the ground their grins shut tight –

one perfect snapshot view.

 

On dark we make the river flat and two ks

more to camp, in knee-high stinging

nettle and wet boots, to trudge

an hour more – a canvas castle

and our pit-fire star-vaulted hall.

 

That night we lay below the mountain,

creek side, like trout facing upstream, still,

against the flow and waiting.

At dawn we crossed Kanangra Creek

for two days climbing, then another with burning

aching knees, gingerly down. Our transit over

these Gangerang Ranges – Mt Strongleg,

Mt Cloudmaker, Stormbreaker, High and Mighty,

the Rip, Roar and Rumble Knolls – we debriefed

each night, grim if elated. Our camps were eyries

along the Gandangarra’s ochred line,

and as I spotlighted their middens

the kids mimicked me, hooting open-eyed;

at the campfire Denash (in parody) stoked the embers:

This is journey as metaphor,

the summits lighting with tolerance and testing

with fire. At last we climbed the Bullhead Ridge

and Cambage Spire down to the bushwalkers’ grail –

water running cool and clear over

river sandstones, cream and pink, the breeze singing

down kurrajongs and myrtles, casuarinas and figs –

our prize, the Kowmung Gorge. Setting a base camp, we swam

and explored: the Chiddy Obelisk and Red

Hands Caves. Climbing Mt Armour’s columnar basalt cap:

This perfection was valued

as limestone slurry I preached. The kids broke into

‘Love Is All Around’ whilst Boaty chimed:

C’mon ‘Corridor’, aren’t you finished

with yourself up there?

 

We stand about the fire tonight

and talk, in drizzle, joyful for

three days rest, the balm

of being wild. It ends

tomorrow, breaking camp, weighing down

our packs as muscles tighten.

 

Next day climbing, in rain, the Bolga Cone

and Axehead Mountain to Yerranderie, a silver city

ghost town built on lucky claims and bitter

strikes; a sanctuary with arsenic pools.

Late that afternoon, we find the lodge and resupply,

closing the door against the cold outside

as the kids collect each other with food and games,

drying around the hearth and cheering:

Tonight we sleep in beds!

 

Early next morning we leave Yerranderie

for King Billy’s Tree and a rock grinding site

where basalt was scraped to axeheads

and chert flaked by percussion into edges and points;

a scarring in Country sloughing (yet again) the terra nullius lie

as the kids sit foot-sore in quiet, learning from the land.

After, to savour their redolence,

we crush sassafras leaves by the handful

and walk on.

 

Fording the Wollondilly we seek sustenance

in scroggin, tuna and flat bread before climbing

the Wanganderries and down to the Nattai on dusk;

a casuarina-and-wattle-bloom gorge, so sandy poor,

yet teeming with scribbly gum, coachwood and silver-top ash.

We camp in a grove of ancient

paperbarks, stinging nettle cramping

us in. For five more days we make-and-break camps,

hiking on. Often we wade in the Nattai’s nourishing

brown flow, secure in water-proofed packs and maps;

as well (we joke) a resiliency born in blister-packs.

 

Our final campsite: tonight

the kids string their bivvies together

and celebrate tall stories: a thunder-and-blood

Black Panther and Cannibal Kev, the near misses,

their rolls and rolls of strapping tape. They prepare

each other meals, a billy of tea

and amidst rounds of song forecast

the luxury of their next fast-food.

I.

The wind currs at the end of autumn. How the rain on the house is not an instinct. The road an aviary.

tarnished clasp of handle
the figure of water
each season
consummate
with moments which disappear

She fingers and refolds his clothes. His shirt is a still arboreal light. It is the terminal colour of all leaves.
 
 
II.

The fields widen to become the ragged edge of the future through each acre, the way a disused nest is most visible in leafless bough, a husband’s voice in its frailty and its distance.

her mourning hieratic
spun like an arrangement of leaves
her wizened hands
the way silence once
the rituals of water

The bounding footsteps on the stairs above her, an absence as indiscernible to desire. Memorial, cloudcover.
 
 
III.

The tireless mending, the hem of her skirt through wet grass, awaiting the blades of hallow feathers.

she lingers
a clutch of stones
a child’s toy
winter stars appear
in another’s mouth

She lives by a disconsolate gift, the shrived night, untethered seam.
 
 
IV.

Fenced yard of years burning, the weight of the axe in agile hands, the trill of a darning fire.

a wife clothed
in the weight of acres
cattail hearts
a rosehip tisane
the bitter warmth of nourishment

He sows the household of memories; a sorrow which grows by stalk, sudden leaf, and branches.
 
 
V.

And the fields, swathed now, at the withered table; cinched dark bulbs in the earth, looming.

the descent of light
his lone steed
a quiet shame
which masks his throat
with autumn

The limbering fires they rely on for warmth, the rifting winds, and the ashes which flock over inherited fields.
 
 
VI.

She remembers her son on the shoulders of his father, legs churning through the air, a regal flight through the instincts of a body.

weight bearing on colors
augured grain
and seeddust
in the last leaves of autumn
sifting

The mask of joy in bright distant townships, circling wild grasses, with clipped wings.
 
 
VII.

Snow geese wend and lilt off gilded fields, flying over the riven house, lifted in the wake of another.

leaving a doorway
sky swelling
the shuttered leap
a whittled toy rolling
on the stone floor

Rain, with its rending swarm, a widow and her alter. The field, and the silence of consonant feathers.
 
 
VIII.

In the light reflecting off windowpanes, the dwelling of memory, that ragged animal joy.

his each breath
hobbled with loss
wreathes of distance
the winter
and the dormancy of beauty

His hand on hers, clothed in childhood, the twinning of limbs which till the land.
 
 
IX.

Daybreak fossicking in warren clouds, the scent of fire, the weight of bread.

the rituals
which govern
her wild nourishment
the calm
before his morning

Thick-lipped glass jars, perfect silence broken before the meal, the rattle of dishes, a fledgling song, heard, when the weather holds.

            I.

The wings lifting that fall in thermals and arcing heaves,

single hours of sky that avalanche in streaming light

from mesas and peaks to the heart of matter and chance,

 

            II.

the seen and unseen heights that garden facts on the ground

for the mind falls with sunlight lifting in wings that thicken

with precision between openness and shuddering propulsion

 

            III.

through the genome of forgiveness for whatever failed to work

or became epidemic, fogged out, or what opened and spread

along impulse before drawing back, retracting into a landing,

 

            IV.

for the current seven billion will sleep and then wake, sleep

then wake, each birth into longing that begins in the cells

where it ends, as light and dark will swallow what happens

 

            V.

with what never came to be, living sunlight that has let us

witness through lapses and stands what balances inside

its bearings, where palaces have been built out of capability

 

            VI.

and stay maybe a handful of years before what was forgotten,

unknown, or far from sync bears down, the wings morning

and evening taking the current light into long-term alignment

 

            VII.

of instruments of adaptation, the adjustment of intensity

to cellular discovery that goes on beneath this lifetime

in the practice of intrinsic worth of the interlinked species.

Lord knows it’s easy to fall in love

with cicadas and katydids, day and night

tuning me in to the Southern Cross,

soundtrack for Englishwoman Abroad.

Pollen-collecting clouds of native bees,

stingless, also sweeten my squeamish heart.

 

Harder to summon kindness for the ants,

a segmented phalanx queuing up on

the kitchen windowsill to come forage

for whatever looks tasty to an ant –

a whisker of catfood smiling on a spoon,

the tiniest lick of apricot jam;

 

a crust of raisin bread, the agreed HQ.

Or outdoors, crawling between my toes,

up my arms – an unacceptable degree

of wriggle – to bite down, unprovoked,

on tender flesh with practised mandibles.

The way they file so industriously

 

one behind the other offends my view

of things, anthropocentric, programmed

to Individual Freedom. I could

maybe learn some ant manners, division

of labour, cooperative spirit.

But my stung right wrist has swelled to the size

 

of a large library (if you were an ant) and

their creeping looks too much like words

appearing on a screen of their own accord,

words I can’t read, inverted, experimental.

I could be more curious, attend more

closely, study ant grammar, the conditional.

 

It’s a long path, aspiring to love the ant,

sugar ant, bull ant, even the yellow crazy ant.

Gentler to tread if I remember how they help

half the plants here in Australia

spread: the way a shift will drag a seed

to their underground nest, feed their young

 

and devour what flesh is left; leave the germ

to settle, in its own time, take root, long

after the ant employed in such labour

has ascended to wherever ants gather

to lie down and rest. And that’s, let’s face it,

before I even consider the cockroach,

 

its unforgivable nocturnal slang.

    In the harsh noon the bellbird sounds its chastest note. Note

 how ants sleep,

and locusts sleep: when they wake they forget what

    they wanted to give themselves

 to. Behave as in an imaginary library,

one that you carry through the bush, collecting overdue loans

    with a beneficent

 smile, and nodding at the phrase ‘search terms’. You

know what’s searched most. There

    may be no god, nor money either.

 Yet we work for both sunup till down. Some trace it back

to St Augustine,

    but that’s hardly necessary (for us). You are one, and

 will be two soon enough. There

are young red bucks, there are golden

    does, there are sex-doves under the mistletoe. I call them hornets,

 poets, singers

of naught. It’s a popular vein. ‘Get your thighs dirty.’

    You understand your own body’s

 music, not the rudeness of that company.

The forty odd freckled ducks lived & died on water.

Like plain country folk dressed in blue-checked shirts

& dark moleskins, they were raised in the same town

& buried too, within its familiar, territorial limits. Or

Like a housewife knifed by a stranger in her kitchen,

Their deaths: some brutal transgression of the home;

A sticky, bloodshot lagoon silted up after three good

Seasons. Their weir consolidated its life-giving asset,

As if it was a colonial outpost counting out its last

Rounds; their reed camouflaged pond transformed

Into an unstable ammo dump. Their billabong; some

Balkan village about to be liquidated. Lead pellets fell

Through their skins’ crust; like how a coin-sized piece

Of neutron star would slip straight through the earth.

Al di là del casolare diroccato

dove da poco hanno eretto palazzi

e capannoni industriali

c’è un fiume che gorgoglia mite

la storia millenaria del suo moto.

In esso l’acqua è limpida

i pesci l’attraversano cullati dalla corrente.

Attorno tutto sembra procedere lentamente.

Gli uccelli hanno i loro becchi bagnati

gli insetti foglie rigogliose dove ripararsi.

Molti ignorano la sua esistenza.

D’estate con l’acqua del fiume

gli uomini rinvigorivano i campi.

Era magnifico quando

i bambini gli correvano accanto

e si poteva ascoltare in lontananza

susseguirsi delle lavandaie il canto.

Ora a nessuno più interessa quel fiume.

 

The River Next to the City

 

Beyond the dilapidated cottage

where there are newly-erected buildings

and industrial warehouses

a river gurgles meekly

the story of its thousand-year motion.

Its water is clear

fish swim through, lulled by the current.

All around everything seems to go on slowly.

Birds wet their beaks

lush leaves under which insects take shelter.

Many ignore its existence.

In summer with water from the river

men revive the fields.

It was magnificent when

children ran next to it

and you could hear in the distance

the succession of washerwomen singing.

No one cares about that river anymore.

16^th Aug

 

Two tall bright yellow murnong at the sandy track –   The young bow to the Imminent spring Looping The cycle (of the year) Across the plains – Anticipate The profusion In Moormurng’s Restricted estate Where soon I find: creamy candles early nancies milkmaids twining fringe lilies tiger orchids bulbine lilies button everlasting billy buttons scaly buttons murrnong blue squill blue grass-lilies chocolate lilies spider orchids salmon & plain sun-orchids widespread & unfolding throughout the open woodland & elsewhere in the isolated fragments of remnant grassland: rare sites like exquisite stars flaring intensely before they are extinguished one by one and the darkening sky of the red gum plains is emptied

Microseris lanceolata                         Stackhousia monogyna Wurmbea dioica Burchadia umbellate Thysanotus patersonii Diuris sulphurea Bulbine bulbosa Helichrysum scorpioides Craspedia variabilis Leptorhynchos squamatus Microseris lanceolata Chamaescilla corymbosa Caesia calliantha Arthropodium strictum Caladenia phaeoclavia Thelymitra rubra Thelymitra nuda

 

That afternoon we tramped to the springs

brushing branches and dead leaves aside,

trading terminologies, looking

for tiny mosses sung up by the frogs

who hide and call from lucid pools,

remembering, hoping for new growth

to show them spring might come. We were clear

of the city, nearly free to breathe.

 

The lake was cold, the woods were bare.

We looked into useless, bottomless pools

where ‘crystal clear’ means ‘don’t drink here’.

Only our voices echoed; no birds sang.

The sun flickered low in the pines

like a dying wasp snagged in resin.

from Atlas Peripatetic

 

The native word was rind,

woody plants such as trees

overlay the wood and consists

in other words most of the stem.

 

Any small ship. Echoic,

specifics of the brain recorded—

 

—loudspeaker for bass notes.

 

Please note this inner bark,

this dry outer husk (from which

it is extracted). What scribal error

this unlikely etymology, by early

sources. Stronger and sweeter

words coined for the covering,

to low like a cow, to rend, to boast,

to cry out the bark of certain trees.

 

Whose skin by exposure to sun,

whose shells in a red heat, slips

or disappears. Skin, plates on fish

or snakes.

 

Where is the outer shell of the earth,

exactly, especially the gold edge

of Calafia. The uncertain pages

of a book—

—what falls from our eyes

 

Killing time, we find a stretch of sand

and wait for the sun to fade

in the bay’s rough curve.

 

So I tell you how I’ve learned

death is Daliesque—an elephant on stilts,

a camellia grown in the ocean.  

 

How every set of eyes that met mine

knew someone,

something now gone.

 

Oshima sits quietly, just south of Yokohama.

Their disaster is two decades old now,

a story between mouthfuls.

 

So carefully you reply,

watching the water

turn solid in the dark.