...where eucalypts green-tip the sky

Landscape With Gum Trees

Only the gentlest movement

In the uppermost branches, the

Breeze sliding from limb

To limb... (Shane McCauley)

 

Tuart Forest, Ludlow

 

Grey is the bark of the tuart trees,

Grey is the soil where they stand,

Grey is the day if we mine them away... (John Joseph Jones)

 

Interceptor

 

Salt in the earth, like submerged snow,

congregates insidiously,

its incipient assault past undoing,

while patches of trees

fret into graveyards of alabaster... (John Joseph Jones)

 

The Last Tree

 

The last tree stood proud

On the empty plain

Battered by winds, dust and rain

The last man knelt

He held on tight

As they dreamed and cried

Through the Nuclear Night... (Gladys Milroy)

 

Green Gums & Gravel (excerpt one | excerpt two | excerpt three)

 

In Spring

 

imaginings are everything.

The mind inclines to travel south

down country highways gravel-edged,

where eucalypts green-tip the sky,

their sculptured trunks like columns rise

to colonnade the forest floor.

Beside the road where saplings sprout,

young gums, new-leafed, are shining red

and wildflowers launch themselves in space,

earth-popping through their underplace.

The white clematis starry-eyed

climbs twining rampant round its host

the drooping fissured peppermint,

while leschenaultia, pink pimelia

each colour-code their artistry. (Claire Grose)

 

Marri with Nuts

 

After rain

sometimes gumnuts

---the big-bowled,

 

boldly-rimmed

nuts of the marri

---smoulder.. (Andrew Lansdown)

 

Jarrah

 

The calm of the forest amplifies

a faint, flat tintinnabulation.

The jarrah trees are just in bud

and the buds are beginning to burst... (Lansdown)

 

Green Gums & Gravel (excerpt one | excerpt two | excerpt three)

 

A half-way stop to stretch and stare,

a jarrah cabin nestled there

where bush paths lead from gravel tracks,

the smell of wattles, forest mulch,

the feel of damp and gravel crunch

the thought of billy tea and lunch

the curling smoke from burning twigs.

To live here, though, would be to fear

the smell of bushfire ever near.

The ibis in the creek can fly&emdash;

 

not I. (Claire Grose)

 

Breaking Out

 

A eucalypt bud is an incarceration of strong men---

boxers---cramped, bent double in a green locker-room

with a conical ceiling-cum-roof... (Andrew Lansdown)

 

A Remembrance of Robins

 

From the twig where they rested

I saw them flit away: two robins

white-capped and scarlet-breasted. (Andrew Lansdown)

 

Green Gums & Gravel (excerpt one | excerpt two | excerpt three )

 

Young jarrah forests steal the light

from rustic rammed-earth cottages.

The redgums weep, the magpies call

in woodlands near the river deep

and, near the dam where water flows

the hooded lily stilted grows.

The streets are quiet, no high-rise

to pierce these virgin country skies.

 

Imaginings are sweeter when

I pack and drive down south again. (Claire Grose)

 

Woodchipping

 

The forest moves below the ground

and sways above it,

jigsawing the sky... (Jean Argyle)

 

Karri Forest

 

The voice succumbs to celebration

In such places

Where the shadows have nothing

Of politics lurking in them... (Shane McCauley)

 

Yellow Tingle Tree

 

O yellow, yellow tingle tree

we mourn the loss of majesty

that in your falling clouds the skies

and stamps a blindness in our eyes... (John Joseph Jones)

 

Forest Giant

 

You have stood there for centuries

arms gaunt reaching for the sky

your roots in cadence

with the heart beat of the soil... (Jack Davis)