Robert Wood, Australia
i.
We laid the chillies out,
put the haul by handful into bags,
spoke of that time with turtles
and dugongs, sea celery and rafts.
As the day mellowed, the honeyeaters
sang out and we braided a future
from stalks, knowing, once more,
that endless summer brought cold comfort.
ii.
We heard of the planes
bombing them
doing the work of ravens.
On our shore, plastic
washed up and the whales
in the distance swam with grace.
iii.
We listened to the shallow
praise of bureaucrats,
took soup from their bowls,
mud from their ears.
The hundred joints, the ten thousand nails
and the uncounted organs
of our forms bound this way,
to the granted security of apple seeds.
Robert Wood is interested in place, relationships and ecology. He is the author of History and the Poet, and Concerning A Farm. Robert is the Chair of PEN Perth in Western Australia and has family in Singapore and South India. Find out more at: www.robertdwood.net
