Route sketched on a map, as if walking

were a kind of drawing, large-scale,

repeatable. Yet, like the body, a walk

exists only as it happens. Look back,

if you can, and call the telling

a literature of paradise: the long days,

the short nights, wrapped up in an army poncho,

rolled in under the willow-brush to sleep, while

‘at every moment some new ridge

seemed to start into existence.’ Now

double the silence by listening to it:

some old tide-race nothing now

but a seep with yellow warblers. From there,

you may darken the way with a pencil,

steepen the avalanche path in accord

with leg muscles that hurt for days—

the near retaining evidence

of far. You may say, if you wish,

it was ‘quite monotonous all the way up,

composed of a winding tendril’—

though not if you copy accurately

those seventeen spruce cut off

at the depth of snow, their scattered trunks

awash in a lake of flowers: the scene

of force in all its glory. Nothing else known

if it cannot be measured in strides—

and no two equal. That is why

you must ‘tenderly unite the darker tints,’

devote the day to surviving the mountain

(that’s meant to say surveying, sorry)—

a mingling of topography and math,

or footsteps with quotations. Genre may be

a pleasant ramble or ‘stumbling, groaning,

slipping and pulling up short, over stones,

puddles, snow-wet grass, and every variety of pitfall

including cows.’ So tell me again

about the fall through ice, and I’ll tell you

of my boots on the trail, a well-drawn fact

despite the ‘solitude of frozen peaks.’

For after paradise comes the body,

with ‘all its goddamn ups and downs—’

its night frost has hardened the snow, or

soak a kitchen towel in a bowl of tea,

lay it over a sunburned back. Take in

the undulating near, the far level,

blue and cold, with ‘terraces of pure velvet’

(otherwise known as evening shadows),

clouds on the move, ‘like weeds

in a river current,’ and a dozen moraines

thrown about in a kind of frenzy.

I remember it all, the view was splendid,

and I’ve marked the spot where,

‘struggling to remember

where she put her foot on the way up,’

the dog crawled into my rucksack to sleep.

 – First published in Gina Mercer’s collection, Weaving Nests with Smoke and Stone, Walleah Press, 2015, p16.

Two magpies in the purple jacaranda –

shadows of their pterodactyl ancestry

they strut and hop, two officers, arms tucked

behind them, unaware they’ve lost a war.

Down here the war goes on, this tiny lizard

catching the garden sun was once as vast

as a dump truck, before the asteroid.

My kind was a skittering mouse, now I’m a fortified

tower and his kind is scattering

to dodge my sandals. Tiny creatures flicker

like torn nerve endings in the wounded leg

of Tyrannosaurus Rex. For Darwin, this

was evolution in its battle-gear

affirming the fierce divinity of change.

So if frogs were currency, I grew up in a time of wealth. We’d pour dozens of lively taddies into buckets; little ones like commas in the rich brown pages of the ponds, betwixters sprouting legs like exclamation marks, and the fat copper adults. They weren’t like rare coins back then when I were a lass, they were just as common as two cent pieces; nursery rhyme familiars. Every suburban bog housed their evening pukpuks of attraction, their sudden bursts of swim.

Ah, but since then, since that once upon a time, it’s been a real bear market for the frog economy. We’ve cleansed the ponds of amphibious poetry. Soft bodies, splayed feet are not a good bet on the futures exchange; I’d invest in bottled, pure water if I were you. Read the labels: Guaranteed to contain no frog (music or body or magical transformation or splash! or the foaming floating islands of egg).

In my memory I flick every rock and find a frog deposit. We’d withdraw them with no worry; take them home in triumphant ice-cream containers, a whole Europe of minor Princes carried by a court of pesky kids. Now a child blessed with luck might be shown a frog as if it were formed from a weak and discoloured gold; about to melt away, first legs, then body. See that children? That’s a frog. No kissing, please.

The sun and the possum and the white snow

and the deer and the mountain and the taro

and the inchworm and the amethyst and the stiff curtains

and the winch blade and the iron cage and the egg,

and the glow-in-the-dark egg and the silver throat and the mongoose

and the on-the-wall duck and the rabid trumpet and the mirror of longing

and the inlaid eyes and the hot pink olives and the bed where I put my suit yesterday

and the porcelain happenstance of your armour and the knot in my stomach and the

buoy

all of it, in a pile, and sprinkled with violet and ivy

and sprinkled with rosehip and phosphorescence

the light coming in endlessly

the joy moving seamlessly

through the wind, which was warming the air

through the pine, which was combing the sky

past the black pines, farther in the distance

the world was awash with magic.

As I  slowly cycle along

Elwood canal, overhanging

branches threaten to leaf

my face.  I dare them, then

go out of my way to nuzzle

in passing. Flirtation with

wayward eucalypts.