Each purple supernova trails a plume
of bees, places you beyond the pale,
beyond the many native shades
of brown and green.
But you make us welcome.
As children, you served us as more
than mere shelter. Spacious palace,
trackless forest, dank cavern,
and everything in between.
A price on your head now,
there’s no disguising your otherness,
no hiding the bright pilot light
of your will to wander, put out feelers,
then hang on like dear life.
paved with slate
and a gardener’s good intentions.
Plantings allowed
to shift for themselves,
a gradual giving way to broadleaf
and the forest’s understorey.
A wall
green with centuries of rain,
and two men climb the crevice
between sheer faces, a few feet
from where the trees make it look easy.
A cathedral of birdsong.
A grey wagtail
hangs his candle
from the highest buttress.
rooted in placental
Mother Earth
her trunk umbilical
branches
buoyancy for nest-
lings lulled by
open-air even-
song’s pull of sleep
The tadpoles wrote themselves
underwater bumblebees
clustered round the shadows
of a nest. The soggy crumbs
of eggs.
I watched as they spilled
out into the open water.
Motorway formation for
amphibians.
I was happy to watch.
watch
their lives swirl
around the empty water.
But above the surface
the others were protesting.
Flicked kicked
batted hated. She paused
for a moment on my notebook.
As her wafer thin legs slid across
one another she stared, glared
at me sharply and froze my pen in mid air.
The beady eyed fly.
She was the supervisor of all life.
And I was trespasser.
I sat in the spider’s den.
I sat amongst the spiders.
The ground only moved
when I looked away.
Eight full stop Grandmother’s footsteps.
Peppering the ground with pinpricks.
The spiders are vain.
They have adapted leaves for mirrors.
Nestled on chalky twigs.
They have built their kingdom.
Rest on tree twigs. Snap. Bones crack. Heart thumps. Stop. Silent. Rest.
Foot hole. Not whole. Soil tumbles. Ground crumbles.
The floor stands tall.
Violent pink bells dangle from a stark
undignified stem.
The soft breeze rattles
them. Only they can hear the scented chimes.
Fish flap. Birds splutter. A prison. A response. Scratched on. hard knuckled.
Outside.
Feathery splinters.
She was perfect.
She was everything a resident
of Wisteria Lane could have
asked for.
In a tree.
She was perfect.
To be near her was to own perfection.
She was a Christmas tree of May.
Full of tinsel and twinkling
lights at the front.
And dust. And spiders.
And forbidden leaves.
At the back.
She was a snake, suspended
shedding crusty bark shell
her warm pink flowers hung
like earrings.
Brittle, curling, withered.
The evening sun illuminated the
beetle chewed and spat out
leaves.
icicles at room temperature
splattering brown ash
on the noses of the inquisitive ferns.
Her one eye delicately
carved and smoothed
with sandpaper
Glinted
at me. A
cracked mirror
in the sunshine. Basking
in the glow,
strung across a bird beak washing line.
I took a piece of her.
Dry spongy bark
filled twig.
Soft as cotton
splinters
Knowing that soon this might be
the last piece.
She is broken.
She is perfect.
She is perfect.
