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RED DEATH, BURLEIGH NATIONAL PARK
A thread of grass,
earth’s faithful stitch,
it had dreamt with sea and sky,
had leant and sang with the wind
on the green belt
that wrapped the girth of the eastern hill.
But the sun and a glass shard betrayed it,
scorched it red, threw it to the air.
A sea-wind caught and blew it into filaments
of streaming aurora, red, orange and yellow.
It shouldered them to the hill’s chest.
They rushed headless
over the grass, the bush, the she-oaks.
They hissed with dragon breath,
fled legless up the she-oaks’ skirts.
Their names were flame.
Their family was fire.
The wind changed mood; played touch and run,
chased them back
to the hill’s belly, its thighs,
again ripped their clothes,
raped their bodies, seared their skins, peeling them
into brown blackness.
They licked to red death the fibre of bush,
red-lipped the trees’ leaves,
tongue-licked the trees’ bodies, legs and arms,
bleeding, blackened, left them waiting for death,
alone, not speaking, looking at nothing,
reaching for nowhere.
They spread their burnt flesh through sky,
into black-bowelled smoke, curling.
In this wild chase, this rainbow inferno,
one pandanus refused death.
Flames coiled it but the tree knuckled its feet to the soil,
strained adrenalin through its body,
through its intense and languid branches,
to its broad. leaves scored with tiny teeth and loyalty,
while its organ-pipe legs sang hymns of hope.
Today it stands grey-bodied
with black skeletons on a black wasteland.
New leaves whisper into life with the old,
dirt and moisture still clinging to crevices.
Its coned fruit matures orange
in leaf-shadow.
And new threads of grass press life through ash,
drinking sun and rain, unwise of trauma.
The ocean below roars its song of triumph
over any adversity.
From the path, from sea and sky we watch
the pandanus grow.
We too have known flames that have stripped,
ripped us of hopes and dreams,
that have scalded our confidence,
burnt disappointment into our veins;
but nature with its palette of colour, its clarity of tenure,
its tenacity of will,
shows us that from our black days
we too can shoot new growth.
We belong with her.
The grey walls of cities burgeon in other places.
Caroline Glen © 2009
HANDBAG
Over my shoulder it carries my cards,
money, makeup, grocery list,
always reminding
of what I must do.
Best friend, it swings by my side,
down the street, through shops,
sits with me when I rest.
Like me it has survived knocks,
bruises, zip strains.
Over fifteen years, how well it knows me.
We have travelled the world together,
wrinkled together.
I toss it on the chair at end of day,
a singular identity.
I know how it feels.
Caroline Glen © 2008
THE FACTORY
She probably forgot me long ago,
but I remember her,
the little pommie, at the Sanitarium Health Food
factory in Christchurch.
She was tubby with a crunched - up face,
middle-aged.
We sat opposite, at the end of the conveyer belt,
and stuck marmite labels on glass jars.
She never complained, never discussed old poverties,
just labelled in rhythm with the moving glass and belt,
and sang Blackbird Goodbye, Frankie and Johnny,
over and over.
She sang for herself, her husband, her home, her work.
I sang with her. She made me happy.
I was nineteen, saving money,
my life waiting.
Caroline Glen © 2008
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