Dryococelus australis
B. R. Dionysius
We fled from terror. Black rats migrated onto
Lord Howe from shipwrecks & we fed their
ravaging colonial instincts. Without contradiction
there can be no life, so a thicket of us hitched
a ride on driftwood & by the mercy of the moon
we managed to find landfall; refugees who had
turned themselves into sticks. This sheer peak
was almost barren, but for a scraggly melaleuca
shrub which had like us, held the gate against
the fittest surviving. We were rescued again;
years later, still a small outpost on the edge of
civilisation, our shit led you to us. Surely our
near miss is a cautionary tale? Don’t you see?
There’s no captive breeding program for you.
B. R. Dionysius was founding Director of the Queensland Poetry Festival. He has published over 500 poems in literary journals, anthologies, newspapers and online. His eighth poetry collection, Weranga was released in 2013. He teaches English at Ipswich Grammar School and lives in Chapel Hill, Brisbane.