Selected poems
Morphing into autumn
Now the snakes are slinking into hiding,
sensing frost to come,
coiled in ouroboros dreams of Spring;
Giant stinging trees conserve their toxin
for their enemies, the uninitiated ones
who blunder, ignorant of risk;
Richmond birdwing embryos,
emerged from chrysalids long since,
have primed their stained-glass opulence
of silken wings and flown hence;
diaphanous thin moonstone mist
laps the western plains at dawn,
so that distant ranges loom
as shadow archipelagos;
the artist's eyes of Hokusai would light up
at the sight of faded blues and amethysts,
the geomorphic folds of continent,
and reach for brush and inks to capture
beauty's evanescent face:
a landscape shimmering with myth,
masked in ambient mystique
that renders it both ancient
and eternally reborn.
Giant stinging trees
Most unapproachable of trees, their highnesses
and majesties, hostile to human travellers
who trespass on their territory, are in command
of glassy armouries: cilia on surfaces
of stems and leaves that target skin,
a company of archers whose unerring barbs
drive their victims half-insane with agony.
Beware the lofty ogres of the rainforest,
grim guardians whose dark fruit proves
benign to just a favoured few — green catbirds,
regent bowerbirds; skeletal vestiges of leaves
bear witness to the appetites of busy chrysomelids.
Insidious and instant shock
impact of these hermetic beings —
the neurotoxin sealed in silicon —
fascinates warmongers with its wizardry.
It's claimed the toxin of such trees
stays potent for a century, each hair a vial
of utmost pain, nature's torture without balm,
for if there is an anodyne, we've yet to learn its name.
Giant Stinging Tree: Dendrocnide excelsa.
Chrysomelids: leaf beetles.
Regent bowerbirds
The art of taxidermy is to render dead things lifelike.
These five male regent bowerbirds appear
convincingly alive, as if they'd just alighted
on the cover of The Queenslander (issue for July 13, 1933),
resplendent in sunflower gold and satin black,
one displayed with wings half-raised, as if anticipating flight.
Some avid bird-collector prized this item, I suppose,
as curio, a parlour centrepiece. In an age when ladies wore
small birds to ornament their hats — the gaudier the plumage
of the bird transposed, the more in vogue —
such vivid specimens adorned the home as talking-points
for guests, or formed a showpiece on reception desks.
Who'd ever think to venture to the rainforest, the wilderness,
to marvel at the bird's own artistry: observe his prowess
as a decorator to impress his lass; precision he deploys
in placing baubles — snail shells, pebbles, berries; wands
he paints with leaves emulsified, to form a blue-green set —
clearing space to shape a courtship bower on the forest floor,
where he'll perform to dazzle her amid this eclectic array,
so as to outdo rivals' fantasies and win the right to nest.
A dance, a dowry