Telegraph poles are the tree of mansinging in the wind.
Cathedral spires of wood and wire
that shimmer in the rain.
They are a fat and wooden wand
marching off down every road
to carry aloft as if by magic
All of the words of the world.
And if we bury such beautiful things
out of sight down under the ground
or send words wireless through the air,
the world will be stripped of structure.
All roads robbed of multiple sculptures:
no stuttered lines of spindle sticks
back-lit black etched
on paper pale sky
From the new and factory stamp
of a moulded concrete pole
To the cracked and spattered patina
of a leaning lean old pole
these are beautiful things:
baked in sun and worn in wind,
their clumps of bolts and tangled wire
wild and looped like an old man’s hair.
And tell me what of the lines of homes
tethered to their poles and roads
like a roaming dog or a drifting boat,
what will become of them?
No longer anchored by their wires
they would slide off into the haze
to be lost in the land and swallowed
by shuffling zombie gums.
And consider this theologian:
the power pole is a short-armed crucifix,
so if we need to crucify some millions or more of men
the means are there at hand
standing by the road as they were in Rome
when Spartacus and all his friends
were hammered up to hurt them well
and curb such further insolence
SAVE THE POLES!
No trumpets were blowing
no armies marching
to mark the hour of her death.
No hearse no horses
no marble mountain
to house her small remains.
No line of cars
No river of flowers
no guns fired wildly at the sky.
No oration from the nation
no flags at half-mast
no words of wisdom from the wise.
No pop stars or princes
Singing her praises
no impersonators
dancing her steps
or mouthing her words.
No! There was none of this!
Just a silent service
from time to time
in that tiny church
inside the mind
this quiet room
of flesh and bone
blood and brain electron home
to all the words and deeds
and sights and sounds
of the known universe.
The Cranium universe.
Somewhere in this particle soup
lie bits of my mother,
Waiting to be reassembled:
put together again
and rebaked in some distant kitchen
The sheep of the long white cloud
are gifted sculptors
They carve their land
with hoof and mouth
creating art
as they walk about.
These sheep will see
the puckered flanks
of some rolling range
and sculpt a ziggurat
From this unpromising clay:
striated terraces
built by hoof
with surface mess of stalk and weed
trimmed by mouth
to the ragged smooth
of a worn out couch
where you can see
the ochre bone of hill skull
shining threadbare
through the crew cut grass.
These green sheep
of the long white cloud
feel for their bleached
and sun-baked cousins
in hot and big Australia.
Dust blinkered fly-blown and toilworn
these sheep make no art:
deprived of aesthetic imperative
by a treeless land
leached of colour and contour
and squashed flat
by fire and wind and longtime
they are stopped short of creation
by the king of nothing.
But over the sea
the deep green sheep
of the long white cloud
mould their clay of ridge and vale
by weight of walking
to fashion a slow-built access ramp
to their god baahl.
With eyes up-cast
they mount the walk drawn
etched in hard ground spirals
that ziggurate these hills
a stairway to heaven stepping up stars
navigable by sheepshank,
an ovine shrine in a land
undulated by ungulates
and ruminated upon
by ruminants.
Thank you trees for being a tree
have a big hug and a kiss from me.
You prick the flat of this drab land
as you burst from the earth
like an arm from a sleeve
your limbs a ladder for the eye to climb
as you sweep the dust from a dirty sky
with a great and shimmering broom of green.
You have no tears on your wooden face
and there are no teeth in that wooden mouth
but if I put my ear to your still chest
I can hear the timbre in your bark:
a varnished low frequency hum
that whispers these words:
“Crush me to paper and burn me to fire
use me to brake your speeding car
grow me to shade your sun blacked backs
and beat yourselves with my sticks and bats
sit on me assemble me ride in my boat
make a chest of my chest cut my wooden throat
read the years in my lords of rings
and swallow the news on my paper wings”
A mean little man is a moving tree
arms akimbo elbows out
drinking in the sun and wind
through nose and eye and arse and mouth.
and I can see my face carved in your bark
etched by beak of wooden bird
your skin a crawling anthropomorph
all cankers and loppings striations and whorls
from axe and hammer and sickness and saw.
So forgive us our transgressions
we tiny angry humans
we know not what we do
nor where we go.
Thank you trees for being a tree
have a big hug and a kiss from me.
The bush mice
flung themselves at his eyes
with incredible fury
tiny balls of filth and fur
hurled headward with enormous force
the gnashing mouse mouths glinting
in the feeble glow of a kerosene dawn.
Jagged rolls of scrub boiled over the ridge
to come foaming down the hillside
and surround the brittle cottage
crouched trembling on its spit of sand
like a nervous cat.
Outside the window a massive leech
slathered impatiently on the wet glass
an animated liver eager for an eye
to suck from a socket.
He glanced fearfully out
as he scratched at the sores of a thousand bites
to see under the lowering bank of trees
the forest floor seethe with hostile life.
He strained his ears
to catch the hoarse whispers
of a team of jail trained psychopaths
who crept through the dark
armed with crusty fish knives
and rusting hacksaws,
the desiccated husks of poisonous insects
crunching wetly under their angry shoes.
These subtle sounds were almost drowned
by herds of creatures feathered and furred
who barked and howled around about,
their inane chatter amplified
by the superb acoustics
of the tiny valley.
