Communing with Nature: part one

Rose

We called it Possum's Bridge
miniature trees sprouting
out of dead bark

I mean honestly we could have died right?
what with all the heights we climbed

in that little valley with
the creek just deep enough to swim in
the houses swallowed up in a horizon of trees

we'd take nothing but a bag of chocolate biscuits and strawberry milk

I remember one time you said
like I know there are axe murderers
and guys with knives, and stuff

but doesn't it feel like
nothing bad could ever happen here?

Dobby

was shaggy except
twice a year

he'd get his hair cut
in the laundry sink

then he looked like a cat
when he stretched

shorn fur
with little tufts
around his paws

Hunters 1

Termites crawl in and
take you inside out

stay gnawing until
you are hollow and
the shell breaks

danger, do you
Understand?

Reserve

one wire fence between
us and the llamas

we'd play on the giant tires
and try to coax them over

I got the closest but
he spat in my eyes

eighteen come home to visit I
had to bury my hands

Relentlessly digging
for I don't know
am hour

maybe but I couldn't
press down hard enough
with my knees so

nothing was satisfied

Scraps

sometimes we
left poems
and stories

in little hollows
off-the-track places

we treated them like a gift
to the spaces were in

like a safeguard against reality
some bullshit kids think about
a burrow or

maybe it just feels good
to share

(even though
a tree can't save you
darling it's a fucking tree)

Hunters 2

I kept my eyes shut until the second time

suprise! It's less overwhelming
when you know what's happening

but didn't you always know?
maybe. I think I felt it when I collapsed
down the side of the valley
in a series of loud cracks

I wasn't ready for a freefall

but when I reopened
I was a marsupial - a soft and
simple thing

Katoomba

They taught the little one
to say it too

she wound it around
her five year old tongue

when we walked through
the deep mining valley

and I stopped to
stare up at
a giant fern

she called after me:
"Jacinta! Stop
communing with nature!"