From the verandah

Together they watch the honey-bee
Nose its way into a pinkness of flower
The wild ginger leaves around it droop.

Songololos sit starkly, privately, still
- red against grey bark
One inches its way across a precipice of broken branch.
Another edges between the folded lips of a tree trunk.

She stands, stunned
By the weight of her knowing,
Leans against the balustrade as if it were the only one in the world
She has no time to lose.

If she let go
she would fall into the forest,
she would drown in its tangle.

The breath of the morning
is cool,
it sings through the foliage like a lament.

In the foreground,
a paw paw tree
sways in the wind irresolutely.
Bare of fruit,
its pale yellow tubes need seeding.

She is afraid of her herself
Of her want
- like sugar-cane fields on fire
Fierce, loud, hot.
- sticks cracking in the blaze.

She is an ocean of feeling
Bounded by the real.

Now, her child clutches at her thigh,
asking to be lifted up.

The horizon watches with a steely-grey keenness
as she holds him to her body,
like an anchor.