Narrow-leaved stringybark
Were I buried unconscious,
face downward, on waking I
would think the sky below me,
for normally people are
buried with respect, face up.
Held firmly in place by an
even pressure of soft loam,
I’d be like a quivering
fly suspended in aspic
in the dark. Not the same for
a bean, planted eye downwards
from where roots emerge to grip
soil, while the stem performs an
astonishing U-turn to-
wards the light and air above.
How geotropically
apt, the way it knows up or
down in total darkness. I,
and the fly, manifestly
inferior to the bean
in its ecological
niche, reverse in status when
a bean is in the mouth where
despite all hidden powers
its resistance is futile.
(Plumwood Mountain)
Many international visitors came
to the mathematics department on study leave the secretary told me of one...
They are here in hundreds of thousands
padlocks with names inscribed or printed bold in light-fast ink. We imagine couples pledging...
Saying goodbye at the train on his last visit to Brisbane
I remember my father fixing me with steely eyes, as if he were...
Frequently I pause at a regenerating patch of bushland seeded
with surface soil from a not far distant forest and guess at the identity...
first I saw the dog then the form of a man threading its way noiselessly through the close-packed forest of gym machines...
The tub in our shared bathroom would have a waterline rim of grease and flakes of black skin if he bathed before me...
Enveloped tightly in food
mingled with indigestible sand.
Eat, the only way to move...
In general, none of the things with a given natural property can be trained to acquire another. Aristotle Ethics Book 2, Ch. 1
While I’m sitting at the kitchen table, she comes bustling through...
The sky is always dark and heavy as a stone, the streetscape is unlit,
inhabitants, it seems, have no desire
to have it any other way;
Were I buried unconscious,
face downward, on waking I
would think the sky below me,
for normally people are
buried with respect, face up...
While we supped the soup, my mind was wandering as usual, only fragments of conversation catching my attention...
Body still, tense, only his
eyes danced with the fly until
it paused. Too fast to follow,
his cupped hand swept like a swift