Chittaway Point

Ducks flap on wetland grass,

pelicans overhead; white cumbersome bodies

in cold air splash onto the lake

like the slap of a net

on the surface of the water, a trap for crabs.

Clouds quickly fill the sky;

only floating reeds

and a slowly wading pelican mark the lake;

no reflection of gum trees,

or the hills on the other side

where the day is sinking. In the bush,

the pungent earth, vines creep on dry leaves,

empty branches finger to the last

of the winter sun. A dog sniffs the damp air,

the ground, the base of trunks.

Its ears prick to movement

carried by the wind, like a cormorant on a buoy,

its black wings spread to dry.

The Dam

It feels steep climbing into the pine forest, the track furrowed

and loose, unstable. On the verge, the grass keeps ants,

lifeless bees, and layers of sediment that hold nothing of memory,

not even an old seabed. A snail crawls across a wooden path,

unlost, as a hedge turns into a badger shelter;

sparrows pick their way into the tangle, and as the sun looms,

the grey dissipating, the mollusc finds itself stranded.

A salt flat, a desiccation: the way a shell rolls in the wind,

empty. A stork flies over the Norway Spruce, entrusting itself,

over and over again; a raptor in dim light, against mountaintops,

dark cusps of rock, and then, into the woods, it leaves.

A stand of quietness. As I make my way back down,

clumps of moss amid bushes of Breckland thyme,

white ragwort on bark. It is as if it is the day after a funeral,

not knowing quite what to do. A run of snowmelt marks a creek,

maps it. On a fence post, a bird, calling, scratching,

long enough for me to notice its white belly, grey head;

this while I sit on a seat overlooking a dam. Later, in the annals,

a recovery – a name – lesser whitethroat, a warbler,

less because it is diminutive to its cousin. On the interior walls

of the onsite restaurant, all lays dead: the head of a boar,

its possibility gone, only alive in a painting of a mother and its boarlets,

tranquil, by water; deer antlers; and the face of a stuffed goat.

White curtains, fog, soft rain. And the old wood, the poverty

in this room. I sit back. All else, this morning, left in our apartment:

the fly, quiet, on the sill, the melted candle, plates drying on the rack.

A bowl of apples, untouched. The imitation cactus in a pot,

the rug slipped out of place; the table too wide for us to touch.

Standing Dead Trees

At the base of the bare walnut tree, snow piles

from ploughs at work in the carpark early in the day. 

An old man sits on a tired blanket in a chair

outside the gate that leads to his home.

The water in the creek is slow, and gathers in pools.

It is enough to watch swallows, acrobatic

over red-brick chimneys, listen to the incessant antagonisms 

of sparrows in a thorny bush. We meander,

pass two dead birds – black, wet, curled, undone.

The agony of snow: of the kittens you nurtured

under a torn wire fence last autumn,

only two remain: one ginger, the other gaunt.

Winter: a reticence, a time to unhurt. All the days

that are gone, an infolding, standing dead trees.