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.