begin with a circle facing a fire aunty
lit under the blinking pink and kindle
dawn moon nevertheless still splashing
in the breeze rest handfuls of striplet
sprigs moiety-up arc an interspecies
intimacy until a dozen landscapes egress
with a eucalyptus lungful and the supernatural
appear commonsense in tempered embers
this is not a mourning poem you see
places are totemic uncle dips bottlebrush
dew admits life begins with yellowbelly
*
untroubled chuckle in gestures
the way the land-owner cites edible plants
surveys the shape the colour of eyes
a course of native spices peppers cosmopolitan
phenotypes he smokes a pipe with a timber
pulse and jokes how he plundered through
Dark Emu in a week thanks god for the
seasons urging to get on with business
eat biscuits wait for the wind to calm
sheepish hawks circle thermal pockets
birdsong warms the valley lips
*
didn’t fall from our mother’s clacker
with a pair of clapsticks in our hands aunty
calls a tenure of love a labor of warmth for light
for ceremony for hardening the point spearhead
the facts face the leviathan that chokes
the undergrowth and wraps its brambled body
around the roots untouched scales a forsaken
gallery this toothache country uncle growls years
of gub-abo leaf litter over his old shoulders
letting in a little peace of sky clearing
the air which left untended is prone to ignition
*
auntie yawns two-stepping with a willywagtail
driptorch in her hand tilts yolk from an egg
little min-min ooze out dance fiddle-footed
nothing cataclysmic no holocenic genocide
no pyretic extinction just a fizz seeds pop tickle
lick with a pitch and chimerical taste of species
in cahoots no war but a wash of living soot no
breakneck rush but simply slips down the slope
flush like a droplet down the wrist a murmuration
of carapaces and critters scurrying up trunks
a breath before a din no woodwind lakestorm
no brouhaha only the heartstrings the burning
dipthong unbuttoning years of flora and flesh
lost on the logophile we walk and talk on a hotbed
of rolling bio-semiosis side-by-side a wandering
phantonym in mnemonic attires cool to the touch
and calm as wallabies watching in the distance