A Beach
Walking along sandy, Australian beaches used to be idyllic: white sands, emerald waves; the only plastic in sight, the toys of children playing in the sand. Now, I see plastic blowing along the beaches, the cost of this consumerist society. Where will it stop?
Stringybark Trees
The oldest parts of nature possess a magnificence that can only be experienced in person: towering stringybark trees with koalas perched precariously in sight of the leaves on the higher branches. They are not made for climbing, like the Western idea of what a tree should be, but they are perfect, beautiful in their own right with their defiantly thin frames and stripped of branches for the first ten metres. I once wanted to be a stringybark tree.
Kangaroos
A kangaroo
Bounds into sight,
Stepping carelessly
Onto the forbidden place:
The lawn.
Is it worth trying
To enforce those
Boundaries that separate
What is human and
What is natural?
Is it worth rejecting
The openness
Of the sky
And the scorched earth
That defines this country?
Those rules are impossible
To enforce anyway;
How can you stop
A kangaroo?
How can you reject
Drought?
Better to let go of
The need for militaristic perfection.
Better to let
Nature pervade.
COVID-19
Nature pervaded
Once the humans hid
Inside their cold, impersonal houses.
For what fear does
Nature have for a virus
It has never heard about?
Nature doesn't stop in any case
Its work is far too important,
Unlike so much of ours.
