The Myrtle Tree
The long way home turns a corner down
Picketts road where the view opens out
like a favourite book; sea binds one edge,
hills roll back the other. The pages in between
are a print of gums like lightening forks
upside-down tipped with green
and paddocks of irrigators,
arcing like lazy fireworks, smoking soil
good enough to eat. The headdresses
of a Mardi Gras parade of ferns
lead the eye up a valley to a myrtle tree
standing alone, the strongest stanza.
Shafts of sun lie balanced on branches of leaves
which sieve so finely light barely dusts the ground.
And if I sit, back against the trunks hard back,
a green skin on the south side plants a damp kiss
between my shoulder blades, and filtered
by the canopy subtle lines hang in the air
like those that link you to me
and us to a passage in time.
An earlier version of this poem was published in Famous Reporter, December
2001
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