is it the rapids or the moss
or the fizzing roil that makes
the granite river monoliths,
their every submerged surface
like sharpened microplanes, move?
blue butterfly or blue-clawed yabby
or volleys of burnished sunlight
through the sky-high overhangs
that wake me and melt to caramel
the misgivings I once had about fire
ant colonies, armies of rainforest moths,
the first chilling thrusts of my limbs
through water – the first bitter husks
of milky inedible nuts, first chilling breaths,
first taste of the surface-splash
like chandelier crystal, tubular bell echoes –
the first fish, first gemstone
amongst the skimming pebbles –
seabird skein flying north or south or neither,
all the fearful tendrils of an unknown
so immense I bite my lips to blood –
watching footprints dissolve on the beaches
I imagine the highest fern crown
crowning the head of a woman,
her imprecise features aglow,
her toes speckled with glowing hair,
the walnut wood hardness of her body
hiding a spirit so brittle and fleeting
that she gazes at her image in the river,
sees the body and the spirit as the alien
base for her green crown of selfhood,
the crown this gorge gave to her and will
reclaim at the oil-drum-flanked exit –
the noise its existence makes,
marmalade air
its exhaust vapours,
condensation forming slowly
on naked skin, the wild play
of insects – the great illusory
stillness, blind stillness –
imagine a city where the esplanades
are the busiest on earth
but where deadwood,
granite and human beings
with minds that work
and don’t work is the only detritus -
would that city
not be ‘the world’s most livable’?
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