Carl Walsh
Dangle
Tempting as shrivelled apples
I would taste but my tongue
Would parch like dried rivers
Breaking open fissures
That would stop even cane-toads
In their leaping/marching tracks.
Is it cassowary plums that lay
As blue/grey eggs on the ground?
Will we see crocodiles
Break the skin of the Daintree river
As ferry cables past?
The forest rains,
Leaves funnelling drops
Into basket ferns; stagnant elkhorns;
The strangler fig’s embrace
Strangling day, and the last glow
Of yellow-bellied sunbirds.
I split quandong on my lips
Gauge narrow tracks
That pitch between plantations
Sea will belt its rhythm
On shattered coral sands;
Wash up box jellyfish
And waste itself on the spill
Of Mount Formartine granite
Winding sediment into the waves.
Carl Walsh is an occasional poet, crossword compiler, lexicographer of fictional words and writer of horoscopes (and other short stories). His work has been published in various journals, including n-SCRIBE, StylusLit, Cordite Poetry Review, Rabbit, Southerly, Australian Poetry Journal (forthcoming), takahe (NZ) and Meanjin.