In Paperbark Country
i.
the slow river draws us
past the rusty banksia
the paperbarks' tarnished silver
like any leaf, we spin
tranced in the eddy
the spell of sun
but see! his dragonfly mind
before the eye can alight
jerks away, weightless
its electric turquoise
ii.
my mother hates the paperbarks
their eerie white scribbles'
twisted beckoning
but their flaky arms above the lake
their long feet, wet to the ankle
their listening, their hair shiny with sun
their fingers full of birds
are like my mother
iii.
when he crawled from his last skin
he could tell it was the end
of the furtive, underwater life -
this hull was blue, with wings -
on a thought, he sent his new craft
skidding into the air
no time to learn the world
but he found
the lake was a sky he could stand on
insects were for his hunter's swoop
and anywhere under the blue dome
sex was a midair gleeful
coupling of box-kites, catapulting
skywards
can the world be newer than this?
for three weeks he will drink in
the astounding earth and sky
his jerky blue flight
stitching the lake shore
teaching the eye
suddenness
iv.
my mother is a lake now
she is all depth and resonance --
the new days cannot hold
they slip away
like a sheet of clear water
skimmed from her well of eighty years
she is an island lake
with a narrow beach
and no shallows
walk in past the reeds
and you are suddenly
in over your head in the dark sweet water
eighty years of seasons
have washed over her
now blue dragonflies bead
the sedges' grey-white-green
cupping today's sunlight
she will hold it and let it go