White Star-Bush

Baby-bush blinks somnambulantly through her thick pollen lashes.

We welcome springtime and its sweet smell,

but she, molested by a slashing swordplay

that ploughs into her coronet,

regards her beaten body. They told her she was a star

in these shrubby foothills. They told her she was a star,

but ripped each vocal cord from each clamouring root.

She desperately claws along the Dandenong Ranges,

a tiny shivering asterism begging for her solar-(eco)-system,

and a cup of tea.

Oh, the glorious edifice of man’s ingenuity,

our dear white star-bush can limp along the floors

of our glittering prisons. The grime will stroke her cheek,

the crime will stroke her cheek,

as she kneels, indebted, for her life.

Indebted until her death, for her encumbrance on this

blooming metropolitan epoch.

A home for a house.

Is it genocide, if one survives?

(Is it genocide, if one, just one survives?)