RAINFOREST WALK

RAINFOREST WALK

Like a sudden passing
through an unseen border,
entering the shadow of the forest is.
Like a sudden diving
beneath the surface of the sea, unexpectedly
the bright light of the day has gone
and it is cool and less illumined.

The sun just glances through a topmost green
and filtering through
its pale light seems to grow green too.

Beneath our feet there is no grass,
the forest floor is spread with brown leaf mould;
the moistness of the air
mixes with its mustiness,
distilling a living ambience
of venerable timelessness.

Pale stems stand straight on every side,
and ferns uncoil huge, spiralled leaves,
and moss has crept upon each stone
within this cool, damp wood of dusk-soft gloom.


Smooth trunks of giant fig trees
branch somewhere in invisible heights.
Roots burrow through the watered earth,
and silence resonates softly to
the "oom.....oom" of white-headed pigeons.

We follow red markers on stems and branches
till, scrambling over the last, few boulders,
we suddenly find the day again.

For there the canopy is broken
above a rock pool's rippling circle;
cathedral-like, a basalt cliff
soars, massive for a hundred feet;
and down this break a cool wind blows,
and from its top cold water flows
and leaps to fall, to veil the rock,
in dizzying and downward streams,
and mist the air and catch the wind.

And I was glad to have the privilege of life:
to be and see cascading, holy water
in the altar by the mountainside.

FLYING A KITE

FLYING A KITE

First there is blue
with wind rushing through:
vastness and air,
room everywhere.

Then there's the kite
lifting to height,
catching on wind;
white ball of string
quickly unravelling.

Further from you,
climbing and travelling
into the blue,
but balanced by holding tight;
into the height
rises the kite.

You feel the wind,
the balancing:
the loop and fall,
the rise, the stilling pull.

You see the field of blue
and feel the distant diamond,
the blatant red on wind,
as linked to you. . .

you feel the playfulness
of balancing the stress;
a friend of wind and air and sky,
and see the rustle of the tail,
rippling-free on high.

But best of all you feel you sail
upon the blue,
upon the wind,
upon the boundlessness and blend
awareness with the vastness over you. . .

the endless horizon and world without end.

SEAHORSES

SEAHORSES

Behind the glass seahorses swim.

Long-nosed, horse-headed, with a spiralling tail.
so ineffectual and frail,
they move with whirring, tiny fins
on back and head, so upright there,
like delicate and live chess knights,
like light-hearted, small, surrealistic jokes.

How strange life’s creativity
should dream these tiny, horse-like fish,
soft-grazing on the pastures of the sea.

BIRDS AT DAWN

BIRDS AT DAWN

Moved by the music of first morning light,
The faint arpeggios of dawn upon
the amphitheatre of the eastern hills,
a multitude of feathered throats catch song
and so proclaim their empires of day.

Even a roost of mournful crows admits
a melancholy contrabass to fit
the tiny bells of flitting finches, floating
from tall and seeded grasses. Magpies weave
a melting middle range from singing trees.
For brass there rises brief but brilliant bursts
of cachinnation from far kookaburras. . .
and now, to seal the symphony of light,
a butcher bird upon a wire adds
his fluting, free, and flowing, single line:
the silver melody of morning shine.

The polyphonic day's begun. The sun
returns as dominant. Air's minstrels,
the sylphs of dawn song, scatter wide, resume
soft, leafy chamber works or solo tunes.

LAKE WITH PELICAN

LAKE WITH PELICAN

The low sun and a light cool breeze
have spun a shining spell of shifting,
brief sparks on wavelets of the waters.
Two ducks sail in the dusk lagoon.

Between the long and ripple-edged
green islands of the rustling reeds
a pelican glides peacefully
with a curious, gaunt dignity.

With cautious, crane-like walk a black-beaked spoonbill
sifts shimmering shore shallows for small fish.
Nearby a darting dragonfly
beats four frail wings: a flash of iridescence.

The stately pelican would sail
so sedately through the calmness
were I not watching. Had I not watched
I would not give it praise in words.