This poem won the 2011 Perilously Short (Nature) Writing Competition sponsored by Perilous Adventures Magazine.
Southern seas baptise her. Tall forests
cloak her green. Karri, marri, jarrah –
sound their names like psalms
in a landscape that maps longing
into deep belonging.
She is a tannin-stained river of spent
tears, a tangled edge of torn paperbarks,
shedding skins, shredding parchments,
she forgets and forgives lost selves,
might have beens.
Each day, she is embroidered in blossom
through once-burnt heath. By night, she dreams
of stars, their light ungirdled, and salt-white lips
of moon soothing river, inlet and sea…
unpeeling dark and thorny coats, revealing
translucent inner being.
Published in Sunlight of Ordinary Days by Twelve Poets of the Peter Cowan Writers’ Centre. (2014)
