Down here sunlight casts its wavering nets

but we are already caught, the cage full

of quivering humanity, dangling like bait

over depths immaculate in their mystery.

We fling our sight into the blue, seeking

the thickening shadow, that clotting of cobalt

which defibrillates the heart instants before

the torpedo shape even resolves itself out there

beyond the mesh, on the inner face of the mask.

The rumbled cadence of the hookah quickens

as we hang, exhibiting ourselves to the wild.

Stripped of land and way out of our depth,

we cling to the faith that for these swift minutes

caught in this inverted world, we will continue to breathe.

 

It’s difficult to know what to tell you, what I saved

from that oddly geometric world, the hard blue planes

speared with light, the hollow toll of cage on boat,

those plates of cold sliding between wetsuit and skin.

I can’t tell you much about the pale underbelly, the fin,

the slashed gills or the blowback of shock after the strike.

I can’t remember much about its solidity, the way its skin

seized the shine from the water and swallowed it whole.

Strangely, I can’t really even recall much about the teeth.

But I can tell you about the eye.  Its density.  Its blackness.

The way she watched us, circling with long, deliberate strokes.

And the only other thing I can say is how it felt to see

that final contrail of silver coins from her tail’s ragged fluke

and in that silence hear my heart, implausibly, still beating.

for mista phillip

 

each poem is a different collection of voices from the Northern Territory’s Gulf of Carpentaria

 

millad mob country a yanyuwa glowin’ song

da sea a shimmerin’ magic ting

steppin’ so brolga lightly unda moon

an dem dugong backs shimmerin’

swimmin’ in seagrass alive for dem

hunters in dat cool salty breeze

waves splashin’ da island of pandanus an cycad in sand

jeweled with dem shells an crystals of light

an written with track only us mob can sing

of lovely lovely bush tucka

us mob countin’ dem taddle eggs like stars in heaven

knowin’ millad country an dem springs

caves hidden in us sacred ground

dem rock paintin’s now satellites movin’ millad stars

 

*

 

millad father country toward doomadgee

where dem barri barri dey bin crash down

da earth an millad mob learnim sing em

e bin makem dreaming birthmark on im ears

 

*

 

we bin get up an hab im good one walk

an us see dat really really smooth coat

dey bin learnim us sing dat coat an us good

way leaves cover him millad mob never steal

dat coat makem you sick

 

*

 

millad mob not saltwater mob like dem yanyuwa mob

us gudanji mob, dis millad country

you come drive in mudika long way

out bush an us show you lagoon

it long long way you know

dat devil devil dreaming

you don’t climb him or dance

da night dat gnabia bin stay

an he chock you like tis

you drive long long way past him

past barramundi dreaming swallowed

in mine an you see high on ridge

where freshwater kangaroo bash

dat saltwater one dat where us country is

us mob sing dat place dem ceremony

an lagoon big country full

taddle, long-nose, fish an bush turkey

water lily, makulu, bush plum, onion an yam

you bend roun’ unda massacre hill like dis

– dem yalinga whitefullas call him dat –

an up a track past dat skull creek

ini cave a baby blackfulla bone

tis sung to stone like crystal memory

dem poor old people do sing dat

 

*

<echo poetics>

I become the tree tho it does not become me.  Each branch of a temporarily retrieved memory of a hypersensitive poet with a stormy personality blown apart by tonight’s rain.  Down the street workmen build a house in the forest for the wealthy, eating lunch in dirty trucks shoes off white stockinged feet hanging out car windows ramen in styrofoam cups and throwaway chopsticks.  It’s impossible to know the forest’s prerequisites.  A large owl flies over the young grass the plump brown rabbit ate yesterday.  The poem finally accepts the reverberations of the forest.  There’s an operatic grammar to be found among birds and insects, but language cannot stop to find it. The hills only appear to be tragic.  Once glance is never enough.  How the forest haunts me.  Each night I dream a blade of grass. My heart becomes hollow and everything becomes wilderness.  It’s precisely here where my thoughts turn to plywood.

 

***

 

(the forest fades) (or i do)     feel myself falling    in the

encrypted forest

matched by the violent wind           mirror neurons

the impossibility of entering the forest

 

i decide to begin eating the forest, starting with a

small patch of grass

the rabbit did not eat         (costing ten thousand yen)

 

one cannot enter the mind of the forest

as in a film where it’s always night and wet

if i act in a manner in which the forest approves

it could make me pathetically happy

All truths wait in all things.
Walt Whitman, ‘Song of Myself’

 

At first you are a cautious climber, moving

Only one limb at a time, testing

The bearing of each branch, pausing at

Each sign of muscle twitch, resting often

To consider every possible fall,

The impossibility of retreat, resisting

Always the burden of broken skin,

Intolerance of pulled muscles.

Soon you are stretching further, judging

Grip of weight and accustomed reflex,

Trusting gaps with the grace of muscle,

Climbing further, faster, with easy breath,

Enjoying the sway of branches as you sway.

 

One day you reach the highest junction

And sweep a glance of all possible moments—

From the pause of a spider on fractured bark

To the sudden wing beat above you.

From the silent crouch of your horizon

To the edge of a faint moon sifting nightfall.

From the gasp of joggers and cyclists

On the concrete perimeter of the river,

To the pealing of distant church bells.

 

That day, or another, a storm will dare you,

And you will ponder the glamour of lightning,

Rain-drops coincident with welcomed sweat,

Before you descend to gather your days.

 

Yet day after day it is never the same tree:

Always the split and broken boundaries of branches

And the slow accretion of living wood about the dead.

One day you will note the circus mass of spiders

Hatched into tree-fold and the wind’s tremor of web.

Two days later, when only silken shreds remain,

You ponder the fates of predator and prey.

 

And each time you notice the way your back eases

Into the veins of bark as you regard the span

Of leaf, branch and their embracing gaps,

Knowing one day you will never leave here.

Acacia harpophylla

 

It was shaving a giant’s hairy body to reduce friction

& speed things up. Each fracture of a Brigalow trunk,

the taut string of a Jarowair songline snapping; ancient

wires curled into a foetal position as the D9s chewed

through acacias like witchetty grubs weakening a tree’s

hardwood core. Local councils paid up bounties to clear

‘scrub’ into the 80s. They strung a necklace of iron pearls

between two dozers; manacled violence, like nineteenth

century convicts kept under guard. The machines clawed

through six million acres, rubbing against bark, leaving

a scent trail of oil & diesel, as though they were some

type of ancient megafauna revisited; extinct, buttery-

furred thylacoleo, carnivorous in their vast appetite.

 

Then their kitchen knife shiny blades scratched out

the jagged stumps that leaked blood-amber & later

hardened into ruby stalactites & froze to the broken

lip of the forest’s open mouth. The rich, alluvial soil

ruptured like a freshly dug mass grave, as the tree-

pushers tossed black wattle bodies into loose piles

& burnt them. Genocide’s sleight of hand perfected

on nature first. Trees as numbers. Dozer drivers

saw straight through their bee-yellow badges, their

earmuffs silenced the forest’s death rattle, made

the weary farmers bomber-pilot resilient to raining

down destruction. The ovens were crude fire pits

that melted down acacia sap like looted gold, so that

it pooled tawny in this open furnace’s charcoal bed.

 

These chains of being breaking coffee-stained teeth

of white ant hills that housed avian clay diamonds.

The Paradise Parrot, a smashed green, red, & blue

panel in the Darling Downs stained glass window.

The termite mounds rose like a child’s best castle

or miniature gothic cathedrals built of sand & grass,

masticated & stored in the climate-controlled fridge

interior. These insects stowing carbon before there

was a price put on the planet’s bushranger head.

The shotgun entry-wound sized nest holes blasted

into mounds by the birds, as though evolution had

manufactured the perfect cavity for humans to

dynamite these architectural  wonders of the insect

world. The cool pyramids sawn off at their bases;

cut down like pseudo-trees or scooped up in the rough

hands of front end loaders & rolled into tennis courts.

 

The ignorant paddocks of youth where natural beauty

was witnessed in the solitary survivors of cultivation.

Coolabah trees surrounded by seas of grass, trunks

twisted like the wrenched skin of a ‘Chinese burn’ or

New Holland nymphs caught in a transformative act;

god-frozen as punishment for their greenest pride.

Half of them ringbarked by pink-flared galahs, their

stringy layers hanging off their limbs like a child’s

Band-Aid half picked off an arm or leg, undecided

about its ability to help heal the body’s dying flesh.

The understory broken by iron & fire like a rebellion.

Exotic grasses chewed down to their stubs by sheep

& cattle until even these conquerors were themselves

usurped by cereal crops & water-boarded cotton.

 

Hoofed animals who sacked the land’s fragile temple,

magnifying a historic benefit to the monocultural god.

Agriculture’s sublime gerrymander; the fascist knowhow

of combines & seed strains & harrows that clear-felled

the Brigalow belt. Soldier settlers of the 40s carrying on

the good fight to the Qld frontier, carving order out

of the dual forces of chaos; heat & drought. Trobuk

tanned, or Kokoda lithe, digging into their prickle farms

like a cattle tick into its host, head down, immovable.

Not the weather, not the banks, not the rising water

table that pulled salt skyward like a crystalline sunrise,

or the earthen heave of an underground atomic test.

Humans pushed the envelope of entropy: remnant

vegetation ensconced on Oakey Creek’s banks,

where wind & animal erosion dusted off eons

of silt from the fossilised skulls of diprotodons.

Fist-sized eye sockets stoppered with black mud.

 

Brigalow, now quarantined to rocky slopes like

the survivors of a flood catastrophe, or reduced

from its diverse wealth to begging beside highways.

North to Townsville, south to Narrabri, west to Bourke

& Blackall, the silvery-leafed acacias retreated meekly

into history’s hothouse. Their decline & fall predictable

as any overstretched empire’s, barbarians shutting

the gates on revegetation; reserves & hillsides

the last refuge of the disappeared.  Ninety-five

percent of the black-trunked forest anchor-chained;

a billion victims of Bjelke-Petersen’s Frankenstein

invention, his iron umbilical bolt that connected

ex-war surplus gun carriers & enfiladed the land.

 

The Mallee’s murdered twin brother buried west

of the Great Dividing range & never seen again.

The countless bodies gone missing in the gidgee;

Darling Downs Hopping-mouse, White-footed

Rabbit-rat, Brush-tailed Bettong, Long-nosed

Bandicoot, Greater Bilby, Bridled Nailtail Wallaby,

Northern Hairy-nosed Wombat & Eastern Quoll.

These protein gradients dropping away without

a sound, as though they were regrowth suckers

poisoned by 24D. An extinct pastoral still being

energised as a red hot column whence fly the sparks.

Black wattle burning on a six million acre farm.

window of light

whether you close justly

or not

you are the way out of just-me

and the way in

#

my verandah shelves light

my trees hive light

what can I say?

me too, me too

#

Company at Cleeve Hill

the hills our elders

green     green

trees     worlds of life     our eldest friends

thronging the fields     hefters of sky

green

and the Rising Sun

its lit windows

#

waiting with garlands

at this or that ageless rock

this or that holy site

this or that shrine –

but unadorned

she comes to my disordered room

to my shadowed room

to my silence

shining

abundant

#

for my Mother

 

A sound between breath and utterance

as breakers crumple to spindrift.

Above the heave of eucalypts, seagulls

surf the air, the swallows loop and feed.

We sit at ease by the myrtle willow,

its fronds astir; unmoved, the hibiscus

mauvely in bud, your burgundy roses.

 

Blackbirds and wattlebirds stitch the trees

together: each soughing of wing feathers

a half-whisper from the unconscious.

Whenever the wind grows wilder,

forest sounds without a forest; the speech of leaves

forced into one voice. Later, silence:

dusk unfolds like a hothouse flower.

Anything can take you there –

today it is the clip clop percussion

 

of horses’ hooves as they strike

bitumen. The sounds ring out

 

resplendent, a melody the horse

makes from the marriage between

 

pastern, cannon bones

and ground. Not just the resonant

 

clang of metal striking metal

but all the grace of gallop

 

and canter is there embryonic

in the sound and its tattooed rhythm.

 

The symphony which plays

when horse gathers musculature

 

and will to thunder across pasture,

to flash equine into the world.

# 1

 

You have been here before. Observer of light,

you know cycles of bust and boom as grasshopper

plague; a twig-like season of woody legs and nutty interior

before the dust eddies of drought. Tracker of rain, of fire,

we find you walking scorched inky floors of dirt, shucking

new shoots and venturesome lizards at the restaurant of the bold,

remembering days when you too were in the pot. A bird of few

words, you prefer to scrutinize, study the day’s narrative,

make quiet retreat. Unless, of course, you’re headed

to the lek – to shake, sing, and perform your ‘boom boom

baby let’s go back to my room’ inflated throat sac of song.

You know how to unshackle that uptight cool.

After the party’s always the same.  You head out to the road,

inhale the emptiness. Curious to see the oncoming traffic.

 

 

# 2

 

if passage were a ribbon   this bird has thread

a slow plains undulation         itinerant pathways

of distance      scientists observe        disturbance

‘a declining trend’     the fine graphite sketch mark

vermiculate plumage               tracking a down turn  and irregular

seasons     lessening dots on the map              more scatter

than graph   his guttural lovesong       sounding wired

frequencies    binding              the bustard wandering

shagpiles of tussock    its crop full      two beetles

small lizards    seeds of grass                          and a rumour of opals

a survey of desert uplands      this morning’s design

 

 Image: Alison Clouston, “Australian Bustard on the Road to Bimblebox,” 2014

Digital print and block print on cotton rag paper,  29.7 x 21 cm, titled, signed and dated on reverse side, edition of 6
Photo by the artist © Alison Clouston, 2014

Chorus 32:

Jim Moginie, Peter Dasent, Paul Cutlan, Gregory McKlaren, Kelly Keating, Bonnie Hart, Louise Nutting, David George
Composition by Boyd

 

for Nathan Shepherdson

 

(i)

 

from below

their white belly

merges with light,

falling electric snow.

penetration slowed

down; a fast bullet

enters & exits a pane

of glass falling with

honey’s spoon grace.

a snowflake melds

with its blizzard

until indivisible from

the surface it melts;

water’s countershade.

 

 

(ii)

 

all quiet under ocean.

sound trapped, insect

in amber. ears useless,

ground down tiny over

millennia, gills not slitting

into bones until a noise’s

speed no longer makes

distance in the blue world.

salt water is not ocean

as is tasted. a fluid

battery sends electrical

pulses. charges fish

until solar panel scales

spark with energy.

 

 

(iii)

 

they can detect auras.

smell the diffused signals

borne by water molecules

that spread, a tarot deck

of hunger sliding across

the sea’s dinner table;

conjure up a red future.

one drop of blood

in a million parts of

water, they will come

if the wet wind blows

in the right direction.

they can find a clear

contact lens on a glacier.

 

 

(iv)

 

their snouts are Franklin’s

perpetual kite experiment.

blows from a cobbler’s

hammer have dented

their heads, they hunt

by electricity, they detect

tiny ball lightning in

a fishes’ berry-sized

muscles. the ocean

a liquefied grid, a

field of nippy particles.

lorenzini’s ampullae;

an apex predator’s

lightning rod.

 

 

(v)

 

industrial strength

candle-coloured bags,

thin bakelite purses

that clutch to the sides

of reefs & shoals; amber

necklaces that decorate

a current’s sinewy neck.

membranous births,

embryonic fluid ruptures

spills into a greater sac.

longlines’ jagged teeth

hook young, a by-catch.

fin’s reverse fontanelle,

the flesh doesn’t heal.

 

 

(vi)

 

times past skin wore teeth

& dorsal fins radar shaped.

devolution; toothed frames

shrink to denticles that spray

on skin, rough plaster walls

disrupt borders between shark

& ocean. they grasp seawater

glove-fast & torpedo bodies

slip through tension breaks.

blademasters skills honed

by sticky shark grips & fine

cut leather boots.  ‘shagreen’

sandpaper from dog-fish

polished ships’ best wood.

 

 

(vii)

 

bicycle reflector jammed behind

retina boosts night vision. military

goggles worn by elite frogmen see

colour at depths where none exists.

ten times light collects on apertures;

pollen clings to a bee’s leg. ghosts

rise from midnight zone’s dusky

graveyard. sharks descend coffin

straight; spiracles pump salty water

direct injection into eyes & brain.

oxygen thins in reverse atmosphere.

black space weightlessness, bodies

equalised with gravity share joint

stuff. five gill slits blow curtains.

 

 

(viii)

 

lateral lines sweep seas;

mine detectors beep

when objects grow denser.

surfboard seal cut-outs

mimic flippers & fibreglass

duende. submerge, caudal fins

flex, a giant’s fist pump &

cartilage tuning forks vibrate

through shafts as taste buds

tricked. first bite for info.

next bite for keeps. jaws

realise mistakes, head bang

& tear at war music. third

eyelid shuts in mute defence.

 

 

(ix)

 

abundant blood, dining

room prey,  erratic finger

movement wags in their face

during pelagic mealtime.

they take it personally &

mouth opens in warning.

cave stalactites’ cusps, sharp,

pointed; muscles rise to

the threat & predators

face off, frenzied speech

no participant remembers.

brains overload on slight.

flesh liquefaction, then

whirlwind unwinds its passion.

 

 

(x)

 

the roof goes. convertible

fins sheared, corrugated sheds

in cyclone. farmer marked,

long queues slide into salty dip,

tails fall into bloody bucket.

a torp’s dead weight when

engines stall. steerage gone,

sleek fuselage dips, downed

sydney minisubs & pacific

planes sink into an abyss.

production lines hook a

dark future; their broods

human length; kursk sailors

clench rusted wrenches.

 

 

(xi)

 

forty somethings’ fear

spawned seventies celluloid

gore fantasies. knee-high,

parents don’t swim further,

their children human shields

for angstcination. in breakers,

still water, unlucky death roils.

spearfisher, snorkeler, sponge

-diver, pearl-grabber, surfer-dude,

bather. tire-tread scars run over

backs, sand depressions don’t

blow away. nets & baited hooks

map annually the kill count war.

one hundred million jaws close.

1.

 

If a lion could speak,

we’d hear how Kruger has flattened his vowels,

how Longleat’s left him with a lisp,

how he’s zoo-mute,

and how his tamer wields a whip

then delves between his jaws

to extract the stammer.

 

If a lion could speak,

we’d correct his grammar,

purge his syntactical savannah

of herds of double negatives,

then wince if he ripped

apart just one infinitive.

 

If a lion could speak

he’d sphinx-talk about the thorn in his paw,

how MGM lip-synced his roar

and how Albert gave him heartburn for weeks.

 

If a lion could speak,

we may deign to reply,

though very loud and slow,

like a lion’s really a scarecrow in disguise.

 

If a lion could speak,

we’d insist he use English

but he’d cleave to Lionese.

The few of us who’d learnt Leopard

might grasp the lack of past and future tense,

while the rest would be baffled,

more concerned to learn

how to order a beer in Giraffe.

 

If a lion could speak,

we’d tire of his whinges of wardrobes and witches,

of how Richard filched his heart

and how his rampant act on flags

has knackered his hips.

In time, we’d surely ignore him,

drawn to the wit of warthogs,

and antelope banter instead.

 

If a lion could speak, he’d say Take a degree

in my language of strangling ungulates

and wrangling with vultures for the meat.

Then we’ll talk.

 

2.

 

Wardrobes lack wit.

Warthogs insist on the use of a disguise.

We’d whip the rampant scarecrow if we could,

then, flattened, he’d rest with the lion he’d just filched.

For if his savannah-heart could grasp a lion’s paw

who’d then speak of a grammar?

 

In the past, a baffled Albert gave the flags

a degree of order, while in future,

he could act like a giraffe.

How slow and how correct and how very English.

 

We’ll speak to more ungulates

and wince with the vultures.

Kruger has a language of negatives but, in time,

his mute lion-hips could learn to talk.

 

How about a lion? Might a lion say how?

Witches would double-take if one really knackered lion

could ignore his thorn and tire of his infinitive.

We’d speak of his meat and we’d speak

of strangling him instead – him! him!

 

If ripped Richard has a Lionese lisp in his beer,

he’d cleave to his syntactical antelope for weeks.

How tense. How could he!

 

Vowels apart, surely we’d purge the lion

of his heartburn if lip-synced wrangling

between Longleat’s jaws could be concerned.

Though tamer, his leopard delves

in his stammer and wields a roar.

 

If few reply to a left lion extract

and if herds learnt a loud sphinx of whinges

then how may my if-zoo deign to talk?

 

Speak, speak, speak –

we’d hear his MGM banter.

He’s drawn to us – and how.

 

3.

 

I, alone. Cold. Bleak.

Wed her now. Nougat is fattened with owls –

so wrong. Pete’s laughing – it’s Alice

(oh, she’s too cute!)

Anne’s cow is famous – fields unzip

themselves, as green as yours.

Go – unpack this summer.

 

In an iron hood, creak –

bleed, infect sick grandmas.

Urgent, impractical caravans

of words have troubled relatives.

Head winds have been tipped

to start. Trust cunning primitives.

 

Misaligned woods – specks,

seeds, lynx, hawks are out, reborn of this whore-

house. Energy in whips sinks this sore

land. Now all hurt paving can’t learn to shriek.

 

Is our crying good? Weak

tea, they claim, could repel

those scary-sounding hose-

pipes. Our crying’s merely a shadow in these eyes.

 

Whiffy loins. Cod-piece.

Please desist. Refusing swish

butties, we got Chinese.

A blue office would spurn Leonard’s

tights. Clasp a slack oaf, blast a few chairs, then

smile. At best, Ruby’s raffles

are upturned, so burn

now too, border on fear of bar graphs.

 

Ivy lines old cheeks.

Weeds spiral in spring’s onward probe. Banned wishes

have now stitched up rich wizards

around this lamp and baton. Flans

as lacquered as ships

win bindweed. Poorly pigs snore in

dawn’s other pit. If bored dogs

stand on the slope, panda skin’s red.

 

With a fine food geek, we may make a green pea

on rye sandwich. If handling young shallots,

add sand. Bring six sculptured forks, then eat

ten peeled stalks.

 

4.

 

rrrrrraaaaaw

raarrghgh [          ]

hffngh  hffnggh hffngggh

rraaw rraaw rraagh

rraaaw [          ]  raaaaghgh

rrgh rrgh rrrghhhh

 

rrrrrrraaaaaw

hffn hffngh rraaa hffn hffn hffn

[          ]

rwaaaarrw      rwaa      rwarrw

hff rrrr rrrr rrrr hraaaa

rraaaaghhh

 

rrrrrrraaaaaw

raaaaaaooowwrrrrrr [          ]

aaaarr aarr aaaaarrrr

 

rrrrrrraaaaaw

rrr rrr rrrrrr

hff hffngggh

 

rrrrrrraaaaaw

grrauuuw

rrrraaaaaaawwwr raaaaaawr

hfffnghgggh hff [          ]

rrgh rrgh rrgh rrrrrghghgh

 

rrrrrrraaaaaw

[          ]

 

rrrrrrraaaaaw

aaaaaoowrr aaaaawr aaaaaaaaooooowrrrrrrrrrr