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From: Vol.07 N.01 – Plant Poetics

God’s Prophet

by Catherine Wright

There’s no morning on that slope, east

against the day, all granite’s flat

tree-crotchets of staccato in the dim.

 

One abuts a boulder; trunk slim

bark reptile-tight, a sinew strained

between the gristly eucalypts.

 

And far from grey! A crown

of lusty lime, quill-tipped

finger kisses with each waft.

 

Amid the arid, olive gums, this teen

in green looks on across the hollow

to the light, where vast-limbed

 

Grandmother stands squat

clinched and struck, her Moses

staff into the deep, cleaved

 

through stone. Alone, folioles drop

in copper clatter, gnarled arms retreat

with April’s moisture from the slope.

 

In language of the ages

– quartz-sap, tap-root, lace-bark –

She’s sending messages

 

by lyre bird, fungi filament

quoll, nomadic Silvereye

Rosella, Figbird, Oriole.

 

Maybe by that slate-dark Euro

tip-toed, tail in tripod then

languorous beneath the leaves

 

or on some ancient breeze;

a millennial shimmer, rainforest

glimmer. God’s prophet

 

of vestal woodlands, sounding

through the lipped abyss and

down to the scourging sea.

Kurrajong on the Edge, Oxley Wild Rivers

Published: March 2020
Catherine Wright

Catherine Wright’s poems and creative non-fiction have won or been shortlisted for a number of awards, and been published in literary journals and anthologies in Australia and overseas. She is finishing her first collection ‘The Consolation of Birds’, and finds inspiration especially in the natural world and it’s power over us. Catherine lives in Armidale, NSW.

An Australian and international
journal of ecopoetry and ecopoetics.

Plumwood Mountain Journal is created on the unceded lands of the Gadigal and Wangal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and to elders past, present and future. We also acknowledge all traditional custodians of the lands this journal reaches.

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