Le deuil, …. or what the Spinifex tells Orpheus

Wild one, whipped by this southerly the marram grass burns, and I whisper
           
            a ghostly sigh, too late
            seed heads held in spiral flight, tumbling across acres of sands,
                                    trusting the wind
                                    to land

See, the xanthorrhoea charred after spot fires, the tide eructs its floating
            embers, knee deep in Hades
            fire rinsed, waves splintering, scattering, boring out of fizzed driftwood
                                    the maze of a trail

                                    going nowhere …

Ropes of marram grass thrash tongues, lunge in the briny air, and I am licking
            the river’s skin, dry as Eurydice
            tasting charcoal, strewn as black confetti, crimped, veined, simmered
                                    whole trees taken out by the swell
                                    a dark silk of memory, a counter-being   ̶

So afternoon hurtles, impossibly, the marram self-immolates, chokes on eddies
            turning, ill-timed as Orpheus
            to our myth of technopoly, consumption, energy, of the gouged dunes
                                               
                                    a very swollen heart, a wallaby
                                   
                                    limping its way through dusk

"As a poet, my process embodies scrutiny over invasion" – Reflection – Michelle Cahill