A journal of art + literature engaging with nature, culture, the environment & ecology

Two Poems by Amanda McLeod

Amanda McLeod, Australia

 

Lament for the Thylacine

 

We stand before it in silent reverence,

separated by a hundred years

and a glass case.

It looks worn out—

tatty around the ears,

exhausted by its existence

after death.

 

Tiny fingers wrap around mine 

as we gaze together

at what once was

and will never again be.

 

We are still for long.

 

Are they really all gone?

Yes, loves.

Because people killed them?

Yes, loves.

 

I do not tell them 

about how the last one 

supposedly died

in a zoo

from exposure,

locked out of its den

one freezing Tasmanian night.

 

Years later, I stand 

in a gallery, surrounded 

by photographs taken

by Peter Dombrovskis

in the wildest heart of Tasmania,

 

and it comes to me.

I see

a striped flicker, a dark eye, a growl,

hidden in that wilderness.

 

For a moment, it is possible

to believe 

that they might still 

be out there.

Weightless

 

When my heart is heavy, I come to the river

to let the water render it weightless, for a while.

The world reflects itself in perfect balance.

I watch waterbirds paddle, leaving concentric circles as they dive.

The ripples reach the bank like passing minutes, smooth and fluid.

I rub a pebble’s smoothness against my coarse hand,

then toss it gently into the current.

There is a splash, a sprinkle of droplets, 

each teeming with invisible life.

I flick them back into the river,

watching them fall like rain.

They remind me I too am small but vital—

a single part of an intricate puzzle in which every piece matters.

In the reeds, two frogs sing love songs to each other.

Dragonflies hang, dancing above the water’s surface.

The trees rearrange their branches in the breeze

which is warm and light enough for my heart to float on.

I sit in the grass and let the sun caress my shoulders 

until my heart and I are ready to shoulder our burdens again.

 

Amanda McLeod is an Australian fiction writer, painter, and poet. Her words can be found in Elephants Never, Ghost City Review, Bonnie's Crew, and elsewhere. She is also the assistant editor of Animal Heart Press. When she's not creating, she can be found searching for the quiet wild, or the perfect cup of coffee. Connect with her on Twitter @AmandaMWrites

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