Poems
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Mallee desert
By Luke SweedmanThe morning in the Great Sandy Desert
is an entirely new narrative of the senses
Thryptomene shrubs and mallee stands
a tonic, a memory, a gift that recompenses -
In Search of the Meelup Mallee
By Nandi ChinnaHeading south, windscreen wipers
frantic, breaking waves of runoff
beneath Mandjoogoordap Drive.
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kangaroo paw
By Scott-Patrick Mitchellblood beats red, thumps in
elation, dread. how, as an
immigrant, my ears rang
with this land sang diaspora -
Old Grey Beard
By Daniel HansenSoft Grey Calm
Touches gently on the frequencies all around
Sorting through an assortment of vibrations apparent in the stars
Until it finds Love through the never ending shroud -
Karri (or, Slow Arrival in Karri Country)
By Renee Pettitt-SchippEucalyptus diversicolour
Denmark, WA
~ Written on Noongar Country with Noongar translations informed by Pibulmun Custodian, Wayne Webb.
Remote as a god -
Marri (Remembering Meelup Regional Park)
By Scott-Patrick MitchellThe forest breathes us in. We are chasing bush orchids. Kambarrang is singing. Through a macro lens, petals bend, fill the screen. Blue; beard; duck. Your grin dazzles, blonde hair curling around my heart. We laugh. The forest smiles with us. Donkey; elbow; leek. Beyond the breadth of this, ocean swims. Here is the place of the moon rising. The fo… -
Jarrah (buying the block)
By Renee Pettitt-SchippEucalyptus marginata
I am a shooter, the seller says
and neither of us meet his eye
earth, shade of a wound, up high -
Banksia
By Scott-Patrick MitchellI thought they were a bird. Or rather, birds. On a branch, flocking. Out on a limb, imagination sparking. The mind can transform, as can fire, with tongue, laughing. Like a tired owl, hiding its eyes, the banksia misplaces birdsong, not singing. But rather in bloom. A thousand individual flowers spiral upward as feather. Beneath all of this, banks… -
Sorrow and Beauty in Equal Measure
By Nandi ChinnaMottlecah - Eucalyptus macrocarpa
In 1842 a macrocarpa was grown from a seed at Kew Gardens
It flowered five years later in 1847.
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Desert Delirium
By Luke SweedmanThe desert is a brooding furnace of sand
remote dunes, a night sky full of unknowable stars
falling, flying and dying like all of us can
a place that in season leaves no heat in the land -
Red Flowering Gum
By Scott-Patrick MitchellHome is a syllable in your heart. In order to speak it whole, you must clap it out: with glee; in ovation; as sarcastically as the Venus de Milo. Here, you build new monuments from stone, adorn altars with flowers the likes of which you have never known. But the Latin names are familiar, because back where you came from, somebody thought it’d be a… -
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Exploration in mallee
By Luke Sweedman“A load on each spirit, a cloud o’er each soul
With eyes that could scan not, our destiny’s scroll”
~ Ernest Giles crossing the Great Victoria Desert
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What is a tree?
By Luke SweedmanWhat is a tree but a throw away term
a northern hemisphere assumption
that we all grow straight and tall
and adopt a standard upward function -
Gungurru - Silver Princess
By Nandi ChinnaEucalyptus caesia
A habit of weeping, now common
throughout the suburbs
loitering in groups of three, -
Marlee Pavillion
By Scott-Patrick MitchellCome, sit. Reflect. See yourself in this. You have travelled over 14,500 km's to reach this point. The world is not upside down. Nor is your life. It is just as it should be. Spinning: on axis; in love; out. You have travelled a lifetime to be here, in this place. How you have changed over 11,300 days. Yet still you hold on to that kernel of y… -
Fremantle Mallee
By Nandi ChinnaEucalyptus foecunda
Every now and then I go visiting
my guerrilla trees, -
In mind’s eye
By Luke SweedmanMallee in my mind’s eye is mostly a below ground affair
what we see above is only a part of the overall mystery
the multi stems above ground are part of the living heart
that sends a maze of roots below to unknown depths -
Mallee love poem
By Luke SweedmanWe came to the mallee in spring
When dawn and dusk light shone
And the scent of the seasons
Blew warm in the soft spoken wind -
Anatomy of a Lignotuber
By Nandi ChinnaStacked on the back of a truck,
delivered to suburban houses,
a lignotuber may be known as carbon,
energy stored, until tossed into the fire,
