Green Dance

Rainforest, Mount Tamborine

I've tried before to memorise
the textures, fragrances and sounds,
the pearly trunks of candle barks,
the banksia's black, wizened cones,
wild ginger colonies with broad,
tough, rich jade Asiatic leaves
and blooms like torches in the filtered
shade, delicate as orchids or as dragon-
flies, wing-petals raised, their coral
stamens messengers from paradise
when they exhale. I've tried to take
this essence in, make it an element
of me, the detail of the canopy, the forest
floor, each leaf, each tree, accompanied
by choirs so subtle, variously strident,
sweet, the unstudied polyphony of bird-
discourse, and I have failed. Each time
I leave, they blur into nostalgia, lose
clarity; when I return they ambush me,
sharp and fresh, alive, complete
with ancient mockery of kookaburras
in a ribald throng, reverberating
timbals of cicadas in astringent air,
the gentle play of leaves like ripples
in a peaceful sea, cloud-continents,
nomadic islands riding inland sky,
and all the distant fracture-lines
of spur and range ablaze with light,
anointed by vermilion sun and scarred
by fire, as here in isolation, realms
of animal and plant conspire, rare birds
come together to upbraid each other,
pipe and chime, a green dance circles
'Abydos', weaves spells that consecrate
and bind. The air is pure, the mornings
heavenly, the human heart goes free;
here it is higher, clearer, lighter,
easier to breathe...