On the Island of Madeira
                 where mountain firs comb water 
from clouds after dusk

the Levadeiro cools warming
                 tempers of farmers in drought. 
Across the Atlantic 

(on a coast by the Pacific)
                 I cycle round a place of learning 
in the lap of another mountain;

sail an avenue of palms
                 traverse El Camino Real.
Here morning fog masks 

silicon(e), dairy-free yoghurt 
                 politesse and privilege 
while TV news-breaks trill 

of ‘empty pool’ parties
                 to save a dry Cal. State.
Under vaulted windows            

light rains  
                 down      
on the pages of an adoptee citizen 

(who walked with placards here
                 who saw the Redwood bloom)
I drink songs of quiet deputies

sift bones of poems 
                 and dreams—
when evening comes

sleep rolls in like a blanket, stitched 
                 with a thousand precious needles 
to comb this life from the day. 

Emptied, those beds sketch 
blood maps, blotting
red borders

across the skin of Countries–
the vast organ naked
beneath absence

snaking veins bear
plangent mysteries
                 memories
 of passing import

silvered fish and stories,  
grasses, those who have died
by drowning
or thirst

wisdoms we could not fathom 
old names cast aside,
ways that might have
could still    maybe save 

our skins
water         ways forward 
and back   roads taken
trust and mistrust, all that hubris

lies, poison, theft      there’s nothing
but the gouge
of scar tissue 

ghost-flows writhing
towards dry 
that blank of page only bone 

and dirge left to sing
in witness to
what was taken

what lost, 
the dried blood   
of leavings.

1. During

when we arrived the north wind
flung gravel through trees
grass seethed at a blood clot sun

smoke stole back clouds
burnished everything in rage
a nightmare halo

we had come for the waterhole
to slip through that green sleeve
but fire howled in its rose cathedral

an asphyxiated dome groped for air
ash went after songless birds
and we gulped in the petrifying world

2. After

through a groove in the grass
flattened by rain

there is just enough of an opening
to see the scalp of the land

is still flaking
the grass bends

beneath the weight of water
a hoop genuflection

a soaked weave
impossible to pass

after the storm
when insects lace

fluted columns
and bars of sunshine

the mynas return, urchins
that never stand on ceremony

The wood moth lies weightless now
her swollen body free of progeny
A brief life complete after days spent
storing eggs nearby

She never sees her tiny caterpillars
drifting on threads, blown by wind
and chance in new directions

Climbing the gum, they tunnel a way                               
to the juicy sap inside, disguise the nest
with a plug spun from dusky silk

Trick birds looking for an easy meal

Aware of these invasions the tree repairs
these itchy intrusions, sends pheromones
into the air signalling danger, as grubs
invade en masse, ring-barking the trunk

hold on as it crashes to the forest floor       

                               *

Nothing is lost in the sclerophyll

Deep in the under-storey, everything
is ripe for exploitation. Unobserved
tiny creatures thrive in the half light

A beetle’s long antennae searches
the valley floor for fallen eucalypts
finds bark soft enough for her larvae
to burrow, digest the dying tree

prepare their next transformation

Litter bugs creep at ground level
Strong and slow, sturdy backs tunnel
musty leaves, funnel everything tossed
by a possum or passing glider

And so it goes as generations of bugs
prepare the earth for new growth
Send great gums soaring to the canopy.

              

1. 
it has a depth that keeps going— 
no matter how deep you go, it goes deeper 

meanwhile 

(bell birds jostle with clippings of German 
and Mandarin) 

the walking tracks imply routes to discovery 
but really they are threads from one site to another 
they reveal nothing of its size 
or of where you are in its vast body 

it could be in the middle of a geological convulsion, frozen only by sight 
it yawns into time 
it trickles and cascades 

(how many times have you seen it start this way?) 

how to come to terms with it? 
how to really see it? to not slide across its surface 
nor live, unknowing, on its edge 

a vast, stormy ocean: petrified 
turned into tree form 

(if there were a single word) 

waves and waves of forest and outcrop 

back to the trails and their black, trampled earth 
any one of them can escape into the forest dark 

or you stand at lookouts and try to think across the sprawling green rugs of it 
the scattered needles of white trunks 

there is no phrase that you haven’t seen—it surrounds you 
with this very sameness 
even as it carries your vision to the edge of space 

if there were a single word it would be cradle 
the way it has always been there, thinking within you 
the way that it holds you as your thoughts start to fly 

(don’t try to hold on 
let it go) 

the way there is nothing so small or finite as your body 
but nothing so open to blueness, to the pull of the moon 

2. 
as summer cracks open 

(a satchel hung on a post) 

nothing to sense but the undulating floor 
of an ancient premise 
a warm wind gathers you up 

the day tips; you start to roll down to the precipice 
from where the world drops away 

(from the shadows, a milk-blue haze) 

what curls around you defines the edges 
distant voices welcome your stalled desire 
thoughts are sucked out into long strokes of sun 

a floor of forest crumples up 
and detaches itself from the universe 

far below, the white speck of a bird follows the river’s vein 

(no, you have not lost yourself, your body’s slight tremors at the cliff) 

vast, sandstone theatre, walls 
like broken chunks of honeycomb in mid-afternoon light 
a flawless blue dome of the imagination rimmed 
by endless iterations of forested ridge, paler and paler 
until the hue grows darker, like an ocean, just beneath the sky 

then, mirrored by these proliferations of verdant arcs, 
impossibly blue thoughts stretch to bone white above the horizon— 

(name the summits on the other side
or let them float like cool flames) 

some things are closer to hand: 
the sharp relief of ferns and crags; your feet 
pinned to their field 
while the rest withdraws from physics into dream-form 
its shy smoothness 
a sulphur-crested explosion scrawls across your view 

(it’s further back 
it will not be hurried 
it will not wait for you) 

this is the ground upon which knowledge grows 
a giant snake sinks into the valley floor, dragging sheets of forest 
down with its calculus 

on and on sight goes, gliding along the contours 
or plummeting to what the water has found 
before spiralling upward and opening into canyon— 
there’s nothing more beautiful than your body 
only with your body could you feel this, could you step forward 

all moon, lichen, fern, stone, coal
all noon day, joy, lulu, hello
all wood, dead, live, wet, dry, woes
all wove, waves, burs, bonds, bones
my eyes looned, ears longed, hands took
leaf left mark on the cap of one
heart sheds weight of the death of one
joint, white gum, pink gum shook off rain
fell blooms, wood nymphs, lean bees
I laughed, mad, vain, wild straw hairs
all gloom, dark, vile, wounds, gone
world goes bad, I let it be—

for Michelle

bark peels loose
cursive green waves
           leap i surrender 
my human-limbed
didge-blown skin	
stretched ectoplasmic 
           i channel trunk curve
buffet a southerly
squall dip between 
twigs shake marine 
           things unknown
fly in silver shoals
chirp dolphin fusion
flute swivel gust 
           let each pulse flail 
me a storm-swayed
earth-streak singing
whip of sprung feet
           slid in gold seaweed
undulant dolphin i
breach forest surf	
crest eucalyptus
           flower plunge drift
swim skyward this
spiral grove moves

This is the one where I dream myself ursine, a silent breath
of fur between pine on that ridgeline crowded with cloud.

Where grasses breach sky with emptied pods or beside
the half-eaten log ripe with nesting ants shuffling

pearly eggs lower in the cooling air, I expect to be
an absence. A quiet break between grizzled strides.

Where does fear reside, if not tucked inside
this heart swollen by the grip of rib and breastbone?

See me weather beside you and the lidless wind,
the crude lace of meadow backlit by two o’clock sun.

Those eggs pop glossy like stars against
the crimson bed of dropped branches.

I plant a seed in my mouth.
To savor. Salivate.
Dissolve. Strip

veneer in hairline cracks, stripe
the shell. Emerging root in bald
white taps down

a throat to branch along the iron of veins.
An invasion of muscle memory.
A tributary to heart beat, a web

fed by artery. Sap rush. I’ll pull
stems upward with breath. Staccato
call of canopy. Branch and leaf.

Bark unwinds in sheaths
across torso. Wrist.
Thigh, and settles.

Age comes in rings, concentric
builds by blood or chlorophyll
flush. I cannot know which.

My eyes flood orchid. Ears, cusp for bees.
Petals plume in fingers of blue
flame. Centers pop. Unfurl in so many

white-flecked tongues. Slender
violet beaks. A few carry off
on my breath. Constant flux.

Others in cream white
lobe themselves open. Fans of fine
filament. Maroon, pin-thin.

Some die back to seed-head.
Jutting chins in zig-zag.
The overlap of furred scales

in ochre. Decline.
In bloom.

1. A Swarm

With the wind at my back
the chestnut leaves
run
     away
              from
                        me
scampering mice
spooked by the coming storm

2. Fairy Dell

The massacre was down the laneway
The shady one near the primary school

The colours of rusted iron bleed into the cement
Around the nubs of the wings

Dozens fallen from the overhanging sycamore
Helicopter pods the size and shape of fairy wings

The shoulder blades too knifed off in rounded buds
The feathery edges gentle on the ground

3. The Spiky Ones

Plane trees
bomb the road not
smooth like ball bearings
trip hazards like ball bearings
landmines in wait the shape of a virus
with all the evil spikiness rough as a pangolin
dropped there to catch the unwary
once the temperature
falls each year
without fail

4. Fossil Heart

Concrete is not a blank canvas
for the artwork underfoot
already striated by the last sweep of the trowel
in the manner of shading scratched
across an etching
A surface not yet dried
before the leaf fell
became caught and died
bequeathing an impression of itself
preserved as if in stone
as if it’d fallen foul of the Mafia
Just the one from the Lombardy Poplars
a fat art nouveau heart
an arrow pointing towards the lake

A fossil reminder when all the trees are gone

In the long gloaming of a slow
hot day   when the dense green of the woods
sigh with exertion    fogging the air

you move easily into the lake’s silken
embrace     the relief of tannin-dark water
that strokes    enveloping heat

hands moving forward   you turn    and turn
a lavender sky     dark overhang of branches
shadows falling on a rippled surface

the voices of your friends    fading
as you dive   the sweetness of a body in water
its cold currents    its secret murmurings

and the gentle rise    a glide
of skin     through coolness
sipping        at the sudden dark of night

Nimbus clouds cradle clotheslines outside.
A map of silence is torn by pitter-patter

on tin roofs, muffled by beams holding
the ceiling. Water stains soften a wood panel

above, forms a shape of soundwave
that leaks in the middle—there is no need

to decipher the message of clouds.
Screen doors allow cold air to enter

so stand fans can rest. Windows, tightly shut,
are rinsed of their dust, of what took time

to let go. The sky is fickle
for bringing rain; the sun will shower us

soon, like a change of heart.
Its involuntary calmness

makes my open hand clench the grass
so hard I uproot it.

Coming here barefoot, my soles fully
imprint on the surface of moist soil, resonating
with the warmest sunset tones of Manila Bay.

Somewhere, a sponge is aching as it absorbs
everything like ears collecting the muffled sounds
that go past the tree-lined street.

A day ends. I continue to ache, too,
in splinters, in learning to unlatch
my embrace from a narra tree before the cutting.

This morning, at home, I made an offering to the sink drain—
crumbs of what grew in and what roamed the earth.
In the kitchenette, an answer fell on my nape.

1.
Forget ropes helmets / locking carabiners this / is how it is done 
Bodies of water / we swim perpendicular / to the fisherman
Float and fly alike / suspended to the surface / measured in seconds 
Quicksilver-sinewed / we repeat our multiples / over distances
Our mouth of turquoise / intended a razorblade / flashing fast forward

2.
Schooling juveniles / we learn our moves in the cove / darning smaller waves 
A collective loom / weaving gradients of green / into the surface  
After the shallows / we travel uncertainties / gleams of will unhelmed
Taking whip stitches / rollered billowed black and blue / flyweight obstinate
Making a home of / unforeseen diagonals / we sleep between storms

3. 
This is what I see / purple flannels of plankton / awaiting relief
Offered colourful / their feast of physical forms / we resolve in loops
An invisible / contraption of gossamer / holds perils and preys
Reef sharks cuttlefish / an embrace of tentacles / corrects our numbers 
It is what it is / raptorial and edible / caused and consequenced

4. 
I will tie myself / firmly to the rippled warp / of the open sea 
My body shuttle / my words of silence a weft / for plaiting oceans
I am not alone / my brothers flags and beaters / fishnets and crossbows
Our geometries / of circles and parallels / deadly to the krill
This is bravery / to traverse the ocean deep / without belayer

5.  
You crosspiece treadle / you weave you mechanical / needing wood to fly 
We do all of that / naked but knowledgeable / ask the pelican
Lightbulb-excited / we make a sharp spectacle / over your flatboats
Our encounters short / resolved in a broken beak / and a puncture wound
Your father and I / crossing bloods on the starboard / know that we are one 

too close to the sky
the clouds dip and tousle
above piles of dead forests

this rusty pot, licked by flames
a burning vessel
holds bitter fractals. Tannins steeped in river water

I hold your cup
stir in brown sugar
and bin dived milk
you clamber onto split tree stumps
build a castle of kindling. Bring back
the fastest parrot in the land. This is your quest

as nesting hollows go up in flame
the birds, both swift and orange-bellied, plummet
from ‘regenerative burns’ administered by: state subsidized timbers

swing into extinction
to exist is to flicker, briefly
with movement. Light and warmth
to no longer exist
is to be snuffed out
to become ex-tinct
de-funct. You found an echidna
on the side of the road
with brown-blonde spines singed off

water falls through concrete lips
churning electricity from ancient rivers, held back
by the force of modern exigencies

the Rosebery power station hums like the milky way
a swarm of insects, pluming
in the smoke that trickles above camp

towering eucalypts
wrestle the wind
at dawn, mist steals
beneath the canopy,
a clearfell hemmed in by
trees draped in lace and velvet moss

deep in the earth’s pockets
gold and zinc and silver veins
filaments, crystallized

extract tree rings, age lines
can you sense the light trapped
within these floorboards?

the tree gives me mangos
I thumb them open slow
over the kitchen sink

thank the land for this medicine
pray to the dusty sun
and the coming mist

I am too sad today to bear witness
to the shifting of seasons
to the new leaves unfurling
instead, I mourn what was

eucalypt trees once tall lined my street
the bay clear and cobalt
free land not cement smothered

the sky is now not golden
but grey blurred

I watch the changing of it all
through the cobwebbed kitchen window

I’m in a crowd, whipped awake by the weather, 
wind spreading shards of splintered light, the thin rain 
billowing. A woman speaks:  all i, she says,
             
              all   i   feeding in the air of this place
                    all leaf and wing  all
                            bone      becoming rock
                and soil      lizard feet
                                         wattle seed 

There’s a murmur.  all  here, she says,

           not land       we RETURN to
                 HERE  is soil      HERE   are roots    veins  
          and ribs     storm clouds      in our palms
    HERE     sea lions    growling frogs     we’re not
         ourselves         ourselves   reaching out    but all
     i     damselfly    sturgeon and lemur     dunnart
               and forest spores    this    yellow bird 
         this  biting ant     arm suckers    flower buds  

She stands on ground she has jack-hammered 
from its path. Daylight on the hidden soil. The centre 
of the city. Peeled. To remind us. Open. To where we are. 
Rain pouring down.   all  i, she says

                all   i   heart     and ocean bed  
        bark    in the tendons    of our hands   sky
          in our tongues    all
                                                 i  

The crowd of us. Pieces of each other in the hours
we’ve cast wide. In the cloud-river’s fall, how it rips
through forests felled, cramming under the city.  Frog
she explains,     koala  fish     all

                   breathless    did we know?

In our flesh   seed-and-rot   and-rippled-air   the space
she’s exposed      rain    and-sea-and-river    bone-soil     
mountain-stone           (star)dust    in our mouths.