Started 2021 during a hiking trip to the Bay of Fires, north east coast of Tasmania
Broken tree, Bay of Fires
And the sea-spray-fine foliage
bends to the wind,
outcasts driven from the city gate,
refugees huddling across the slope.
And one wiry little trunk reaches up
in shamanic weirdness,
stripped of most of your leaves,
a madman guide from the other side of drifting sand.
Perfectly half-broken.
Serene as a bonzai, curled like burning paper
with your calm, salt-maddened smile.
Wrapped in shuffling sand, wandering your bending verge
where two worlds clash.
Vast and savage she reclaims her borders,
again and again and again,
demonically beautiful
clothed in soft painted foam
and grey glare,
hiding her depth under a frenzy of wine-dark horses,
neck-arched sea-spray manes,
cupped and jostled in the sea wind.
Beside you, a granite boulder,
shouldered over, bruised by time,
and painted in flames of lichen.
But inside, dark and steady,
and dense with volcanic memories,
holds and holds and holds and holds
while civilisations rise and fade like days.
Old tree,
I hear your hermit whisper,
your tales of becoming the energy of oceans in your bent and proud
little holding.
You grin and tell me that until the final storm you will keep your shifting garden.
Fierce and strange and alive,
exiled from Athens,
stoned by its citizens
(yet in the night they wonder about your dangerous freedom)
eyes squinted to the wind.
She has beaten you into a knot of strange will,
a woody vortex made of stinging sand and shrill winds,
the terrible horizon fused into your broken little branches,
vast arms that welcome her like a lost child.
Further south, Spiky Beach is an extraordinary spot on the coastal highway. I’d like to go back there to begin some serious work…
