Thin Skinned

​

Step outside naked.

Step out barefoot on the silky soft sod of the grass. 

Step out to bare both sole and soul,

to feel sun and breeze on the whispering skin.

 

But skin will not bear sunburn or goosebumps,

bindi-eye needles in toes, 

bloodsucker mozzie bite itches,

nor the ant nest guardian sting.

 

The shock to the nerves is raw.

Into the man-built cave step back.

Step back, step back! 

To save the thin 

and 

maggot 

soft 

skin.

​

​

​

Feel Them There

​

On the tongue a caffeine residue dries.

Eyes close, sore from internet or TV screens,

ever hurry-stressed muscles tense,

while nose has numbed from traffic fumes

and ears have turned tone-deaf         

from city noise and construction sites.

        

Mind in cluttered discord clangs—

never knows the wallaby’s courting sound, 

the gentle tze, tze, tze,

nor how the fledgling Butcherbird learns his father’s song,

nor how to hear the hum of the horizon.

 

But let thoughts evaporate like dew,

unravel and open 

and soon

the Pretty-Faced Wallabies loiter and linger by.

 

In camouflage, they lie and hide 

in the tree shadows of bright sun.

Hear their quivering breath. 

​

Feel them there.

​

​
 

High

 

On the old trails of Mebbin forest,

the mare looks where I look;

I look where she listens.

I feel the shifts of her attention.

We feel the land in its lay,

the roll of hills and dales

beneath the hard-packed, stony dry —

the tracks, such transient and faint scrapes across

an Earth as deep and vast as eons.

We smell the burnt bark of spent fire,    

the shed skin of a python,

the toast and honey spray of tallowwood in bloom,

the ooze of eucalyptus leaves,

the damp moss clinging to creek rocks,

the fresh compost at the roots of a fig tree giant.

Like my mare, my gut vibrates,

an ektara, high strung.

Our guts together sing the chords,

of cicada drones and cricket trebbles,

the buzz of tiny, shiny, blue-black native bees,

the scuttle of goannas up trees 

as we pass,

and thrum the drumbeats of her hooves,

high on the old log trails of Mebbin.

 

 

​

Grief hovers

​

Grief hovers over my shoulder,

nudges sore at the back of my eyes.

chokes my throat, hollows my chest,

robs me of my stomach.

What fruit can I offer you, dear Earth?

Oh, you teacher who showed me how to love,

the fragrant flowers for your grave have died.

Sandlewood and myrrh have turned to ashes.

What candle will burn to light this darkness,

this blight through all the extinctions to come?

I think of striking a flame, and recall

it was the smoke that started the dying. 

 

​
 

Impermanence

 

As they have for millions of years,

these trees tower. 

Tears for all of this that so soon dies.

Softly they are dressed

in damp velvet mosses, liverworts, 

festooned with stag-horn epiphytes,

studded with orange slivers of fungi. 

Drunken fragrances commingle, 

damp earth, leaf litter,

fallen fruit fermenting.

Between tall trunks, vines

interweave a steel-rope lace. 

Between dark leaves 

glint fragile lines of webs. 

Tiny spiders like fire opals hang suspended, 

wrap their insect prey in shrouds, 

or suck their ichor.

“Woop, woop, woop, woo-ooeeyup, wheeyip!”

says the Whip Bird with that violent flap of his wings.

The Wompoo gargles his notes.

Trees open into colonnades

on either side of water running over rounded rocks. 

Branches arch into vaults. 

From above the canopy of back-lit lime leaves,

the sun’s rays lance the air at forty-five degrees,

to land on fern, crimson anemone fungus, 

and lapis-lazuli dragonflies 

mating in aerial ballet.

Tears fill my eyes,

for millions of years of evolution in demise,

for carbon dioxide, methane, 

and nitrous oxide skies,

for the Celsius degrees as they rise,                  

tears for all of this that so soon dies.