ISSUE SIXTEEN

To Water

Predators like us know all about preservation of energy.

Background music — a drummer falls into his set the

ribbon gum has a hohum on —

sheds in sync with the birth

& beggary of spring.

We too tumble as we fumble

with bedsheets & nervepurrs —

that shack at the edge of the park

where Gymea Lilies engrave the sky.

Later we walk through paths

that kangaroos have made to water.

Sly imported grasses have homed themselves there

down deep beneath the ridge.

Beast & humans pass in edgy concord.

A few steps offtrack an echidna notices nothing but the feed.

This is the godguts of the land.

Like those grasses

we are somehow a part

yet simultaneously irrelevant & a threat —

our recording, our boots.

Chasing Andy Goldsworthy

That birthday

is still caught in faded

snapshots.

We searched

for stone candles

in the skinfolds of hills

found circles

in the process of becoming

squares

rocks becoming grasses

becoming curlicues

of twigs

tying

dandelion clocks

to weak sun-shadows

In the valleys

we found whole

yellow-emerald groves

snug in striped sweaters

dry stone walls

wound around

the knees of birches

We whizzed along

forest roads

and up onto bare slopes

where stone eggs

and flint loops

were busy painting the eyelashes

of curious hills

Transient hours

before a clutch

of crimson leaves

on a raised island

in a hidden stream

dispersed—like affection can—

in a gust of wind

I understand better now

that when rain falls

water distorts the colours—

real or imagined—

that art is sometimes

a natural extension

of old energy

sometimes

a stretch of belief

that what often seems solid

may be a cloud of web-fine wishes

released into the void

The Bones Tell All

How to confront the harshest muse,

the one whose masks are myriad,

who ultimately, when exposed,

will have no eyes, no face?

How to confront the nemesis

who enters unidentified,

yet knows the time and place,

employing agents, often uniformed?

The elements that nourish life

can just as soon extinguish it;

human hands, designed to make,

as instruments of will can kill.

And so the child is slain at play,

the helpless are defiled and maimed;

the soldier steels his hands and mind

to do the work of hate.

When the brain and soft tissue

are gone, the bones still testify:

the bones tell all

they know, they cannot lie—

for Clea Koff, forensic

anthropologist (Rwanda, Bosnia)

and author of The Bone Woman