1. shade
under tree fern – this light, hairy hide, neck of a grass-eater
reaching with its beard of moss and filmy ferns, how it
sways, wobbles under her palm, as wide
as her body, in the lively air – leaf glow
under sassafras, the greening of the sun, canopy
of lime, wrapped roots, mottled bones,
wind lending the girl all
of their fingers – fronds under branch
2. mountain
old gums thin as saplings, crammed
with mountain wind, all-this-place
in their arms, in root-stone and air-bark,
in the leaf-light, all their skins, their greens
and pinks and browns, made of silver
3. song
the twigs of the trees – stirrup anvil hammer –
feed their palms, their green tips, their breath – we try but
cannot mimic them – into the sounds
of the light’s chorus
4. of an age
down the mid-trunk, how the bark and wood curls
in and apart, like lips, the mouth
opening, the old, old tongues breaking into buried
psalms, into rot, into hollows – possum nest,
bird home – the tree turning its core
into a part of the weather… caw, says the raven
caw caw, then silence, beak
in the crumbling, through the soft-bodied grubs
5. spent
all gap now yearning desertsoil andtoomuch sky greensong
stripped and broken inhispalm myrtle burl step and step
the coupe deepcut this branchthis trunk discarded inhis
palm he can sell saladspoons letterholders
6. tree talk
the woman straying into the forest feels her feet
on the roots and soil like wings in air currents the trees
handing her one to the other brushed airy
in their whispers
the child is branch slotted
into this trunk like clay joined
as an afterthought child’s
talk in the breeze
leaf-cry eyes that are
pieces of sky
7. door jamb
the shrub’s tips and branch stubs bashed, whipped on the gum’s
heavy trunk – wind scars, tender on the thick-haired bark, the shrub
wiry in its count of storms… wrapped in the tree’s circles
8 lingering
in the crowd of the forest there are gums
white against the sky, not dead but
clinging – this one branch dripping emerald,
new wood nudged around the old,
greens and smears of red leaching
from a tendril of root,
earth-soaked, the sky, again,
through the dust of stones