Two poems

Kangaroo Doe Feeding Alone at 0ºC

Light almost bends into the valley

with the sun still some distance away

and a solitary kangaroo doe is feeding

inside a clear, freezing morning.

 

Her fur is bristling – spiked –

and the grazing is slow, regulated,

and even first birdsong doesn’t raise

her gaze from the ground, the grass

 

sharp, snapping loud as intimacy.

There is only this. Or there is causality

of new grass through past swathes,

seed shucked in heat, dirt that breathes

 

under pressure, dirt that insists

an interconnectedness

between the temperate

and the furious, the late

 

and the early. The warming

is slow this morning

within the greater warming

of every other mourning,

 

and the grass loosens its resistance

and the doe raises its head to glance

at the particular qualities of this new day,

silver eyes calling, sun blue over valley.

 

Limbo Sub-canto 34

Corrigenda of moon moths

and young roo gasping

with heat near the leak

 

in the Great Tank as Tracy

gently speaks and its sociology

becomes a personal appeal.

 

So many moon moths

that I shake like a forest

hit by government approvals

 

for mining, while still hoping

that the portent is false, just as I hope

the evening star wasn’t pinning

 

me down in the shadows

and buzzing in my ear.

We have denied the boundaries

 

of survey but are always on edge,

and the loss of every life

through violence is occluded

 

by every window display, every

business as usual movement

through solitary and collective

 

biorhythms. Responsibility

rests with activists as much

as anyone else. Micro denials.

 

Baptisms in dust where water

is scarce. Other modes of entry

and other marks of spiritual cybernetics.

 

With hands raised to hold up a full moon

that formed in another time zone

a projection passes through me as details

from Méliès’ Le Voyage dans la Lune...