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Thylazine: The Australian Journal of Arts, Ethics & Literature                                                                                                                                         #1/thyla1c THE POETRY OF JOHN ANDERSON Selected by Coral Hull [Above] Portrait of Poet John Anderson by Jenni Mitchell (oil on canvas 1992 36" x 30") "I saw how they laboured - their tremendous sadness ... but they keep slipping back... as if the sea itself were drowning." I The Brachychiton I "The bluegum" I "The dream ..."(the Merri Creek Sequence) I "The black duck ..." I "The red flowering gum ..." I "The river redgum ..." I "even by day the gum insists ..." I "casuarinas ..." I "The laugh of the kookaburra is sensed ..." I "I find my spirit in the woodlands" I "cascades of stars ..." I "Galahs ..." I "After rain the desert becomes a garden" I I am a Thistle with Open Arms I Quiet Ruin is the Conversation of the Bulbs I Grasslands I Unidentified Bird I Kalbarri, W.A. I Pilbara, W.A. I Holy Trees I The Brachychiton (Kurrajong) Study the leaves of the Brachychiton And you will be ready for any turn in the conversation What holds true in a grove of Brachychitons Holds true in wheatfields and oaks The kind of thought that I aspire to Would not disturb one leaf of Brachychiton I am not self-conscious in the Brachychiton Some are afraid in the Brachychiton Brachychiton Brachychiton Enter the Brachychitons After a while my thoughts fly When I chant "The Brachychiton" They sit down and most move around in the Brachychitons I thought my jeans were Brachychitons Nirvana Brachychiton. Brachychiton Das Cyclamens. It is different each time in the Brachychitons Published in The bluegum smokes a long cigar (Rigmarole of the Hours, 1978). The bluegum smokes a long cigar. A silver cloud is parked beside it. The gravel is washed and a Canberra diplomat in a slim dinner suit is idling his legs from the bonnet. A beautiful sylph bursts from a grey cocoon on the tree trunk and wreathes him in grey silks         She is a moth, But she drinks champagne. Published in The bluegum smokes a long cigar (Rigmarole of the Hours, 1978). The dream: I am exploring the Merri Creek in its pristine state. Several tortoise are sitting over a jumble of riverstones. They form a mosaic. There is an interplay between their various sizes and the countering foundation of riverstones. The roots and lower trunk of a gum engirdle the scene. . . The dry bark, the spare white tufts of grass indicate the season and the place. It is roundabout high noon and all things seem drummed into their forms. It is the time of clarity when creatures recognise one another. The image is fixed. I wander off. Three lizards rest in file on a rockface, in a simple progression of size and in a clean upward curve. The Merri is a stream both merry and grave grey and bright these are images from its grey grave aspect its genii locii exposed as though the blood of the reptiles had itself cooled with the blood of the lava flow and now the lizards and tortoise had taken on a cooler rocky glow, were clinging to that first stone, for the first time were arranging themselves in recognition of the sun, forms shot from the earth's centre back into the light's circle . . . The Merri Creek A wise wince in the landscape A complex cavalcade and gallery folded into the Melbourne plain        As the moon is really further away from the earth than the sun        so too parts of Studley Park, the Merri Creek are further away from present-day Melbourne than Bath or Edinburgh The meeting of the Merri and Yarra is that of two powerful wizards: the active mentality of the Merri Creek the lugubrious unconscious of the Yarra The Merri gathered all that palaver in the first place from up North, Mt Fraser, and chucked it against the sandstone hills, Kew. Chucked it there. Chucked it right across the Yarra. So the Yarra collected itself, grew and grew into a great lake and laid down the flats of Ivanhoe and Heidelberg. Laid them down. Laid down those flats. Bayrayrung the Yarra thought and thought. Thought out how to cut around the lava tongue, through the softer sandstone, making the Yarra cliffs. Making those cliffs Making them nice The Merri and Yarra Together they made this place. Walk down the Merri, by the stony terraces, ear attuned to the water tinkling, to the confluence at the Falls: the Merri and Yarra have cultivated their differences and have plenty to talk about. The mentality of the Merri A most precise and pristine place A world of clear shapes, its clear mind The stillest park of Melbourne A still, zero zone the underlying secret of this region the state is basalt, themestone of the Western Volcanic Plains, of that countryside's mentality grey and hard perhaps the note was struck for an intellectual, grey-suited town but that seriousness that Melbourne took upon itself that erected Melbourne Grammar, Pentridge, and paved the streets in sheets of blue metal replaced that native excitement with pain tore the heart out of the stone Melbourne became John Shaw Neilson's "Stonytown" A sense of wholesale desecration in a Melbourne streetscape A denser sense of stone in these compacted cliffs In this land the stone seems architecturally complete Still bearing its aboriginal reflection Dense with centuries of that accumulated attention Australia a country where the stories go down to the stones Where the stones are there follows an aboriginal art Merri means stone This was the land of the Merri Merri people Stoniness and merriness twin properties of the Merri Creek modest in size, companionable a stoniness that makes for brightness, clarity the stonework a vehicle for jumping water a model for the work, the project that affords rejoicing this water steps away from the happiness of a babbling brook, with its froggy earthy and grassy connotations here in the Merri stream a rarefied merriness, unclinging, tippling over the rocks water and stone each other's weedless instrument water that draws out, races on stone that draws in, lingering stones turned to planetary spheres in the stream Below hewn cliffs. Faceted. In their station. . . . the celestial rivulet effecting an effortless flow. This accessible and pretty stream A gathering place long before the coming of the whiteman. . . For many of the same geographical reasons that made the region attractive for European settlement. The tracks crossed here Tribes gathered from Gippsland, the Western District, the Goulburn Valley. . . And the Merri rose to the occasion with great works, In its Northcote tract a succession of arenas and amphitheatres. Opposite McLachlan St, Northcote Where Batman signed the treaty Twin cupped cliffs The breasts of two black swans Why do I think of the White Cliffs of Dover? Essence of those cliffs rounded in memory and trimmed by distance The image of one cliff almost immediately and perfectly repeated Repeated in memory This park of memories A fated spot, where images of other places and other times are carried, cross and shimmer: Those Bonsai cliffs sitting over a little ocean where the sun sits deep this same pool where breezes flush the surface with skirmishes of waves, and when the ripples clear, white clouds ride on an occult course Beneath, the water is black and still A black crystal ball In that complex crosshatch of overlaid impressions a profundity Beside strongly sensed but unfathomable harmonies, a recollection of Beethoven's late quartets Northeast: the medieval prospect of Rucker's Hill or Montmartre All around some excitement, some enchantment in the old brick houses, with their towers and palms, standing like churches over the sacred spots. . . The pine tree and the Japanese footbridge waiting for Hokusai In winter, below the High Street bridge, the Merri, a green stream with white horses, Canadian, Icelandic, Pennine, a salmon stream perhaps And prefigured in the rock, in the columns, planes, stepping stones, in the conglomerate states of matrix, bubble and lava rope        rock mandalas        Inca stonework A Durer folio of crocodile tails, fronds of Norfolk pine, Banksia cone We are all escapees from Pentridge as we watch these cliffs We let ourselves go in the stones Also by the pool, on the other side, a most luxuriant bank of blackberries, complementary to the cliffs, likewise extraordinarily shapely and composed Dream, Kyabram front garden: Sobbing rends the air. The trees crying. The sound penetrates the privet hedge, the weatherboard, all the familiar trappings. An ache rises in my own chest. I feel I am being cried. I cross the lawn, am drawn to the pretty spot under an ash tree, by a wooden bridge, over an irrigation ditch. On a patch of bare earth lie arranged four or five blackberries I kneel to inspect them A presence beside me, female I think, informs me that these are the tears shed by black women for their men who lie murdered By the Merri, in the Gippsland forests The blackberries are the tears of the country Its buried black history They have been here an Australian length of time The country is making something different of all of us The Merri Creek Melbourne's black duck face the ducks they so fit the warp and weft of the stream they now almost alone partake of the native aspect of this place, mostly naked of its she-oak, blackwood and redgum they wrest themselves from the water as if from the rock itself - and they snap back - hit the water in a body this is specifically black duck territory rock crystal packed like the black duck's feathers easy to imagine that this might be their Melbourne home and increase centre that they are the custodians of the local dreaming the mark of that knowledge the wise lines that emphasise its eyes nothing more beautiful than the glad charge of duck through galleries of redgum - but here in their absence the cliffs lend that vista that paces and fledges each dip, makes the history of that flight visible Just as a cluster of gums will reveal other, especially ethereal properties of water, snow or mist, the Australian depths in that pool are reflected in that great eye and that parting blue green violet flash another symbol of the deeper illumination beneath the Merri's grey wings down in the stream bed terraces rounded rocks in shoals a Zen stone garden effect like shoals of thinkers these stony domes thinking that the stone collectedly thinks we collect ourselves in the stones the Merri Creek saying the right things over and over stone koans the polished usualness of the stones the daily round that these stones once knew in those days each thought jumped out of a nutshell every now and then a thought jumps out of a whiteman he wrinkles his thinking his own Here sit the birthstones of the Merri tribe Here sit the Northcote Council The writer is a stone in the Merri Creek Turned by the stream In turn by the Hemensley roneo Published in The forest set out like the night (Black Pepper, 1995). The black duck is Australia's most common duck. It is closely related to the European mallard, with which it is interbreeding. The male mallard has a glossy dark-green head, the female mallard is similar in appearance to both male and female black duck, except that the lines about its eyes are not so broad and rich. In the fusion of the two species the distinctive wise eye of the black duck is disappearing. I suspect that this event is as much of mythological as of genetic significance. It is like a symbolic, almost willing departure of a native wisdom from this land. So too the brolga, that most integral aboriginal bird, is interbreeding with the Sarus crane. The passing of these forms could be seen to be of the same genesis as the self-determined passing of the aboriginal wise men. Many of these men were so saddened by all they saw that they died with their secrets rather than have them passed on to detribalised sons. The line of the black duck's eye is like the seal of that knowledge that grows in the inner reaches of the organism, in its most mysterious and long-neglected inner tracts, that inner world that is still reflected in the outer world, that still rises substantially, is substance rising on the Australian land mass. What remains intact of the Australian landscape is bathed still with that inner sheen of dreaming light, in that inner sheen and coherence of deep body dreams. So perhaps it is not the individual battle of the duck's genes that is being fought. What is happening is more an indication of just how near to the brink of losing an earth dreaming we are. Left undisturbed, or left to the pattern of land use to which they are accustomed, the native forms will hold their own. But all too quickly our dreams, our memories, the finest instances of these, are being cut down, flooded, poisoned, carved away. The black ducks that once spread their veil over most of Australia were most peculiarly adapted to its little networks of swamp, so distorted now by the proportion of regulated water storage to the ephemeral bursts of hidden shimmering greens. The previous water pattern that once greeted the plains in that magic green of greens, green of an Australian green, its very magic being that it was a green that was not there every day. Then the waters were wild and the water bodies were living spirits, ducks dotted in attendance. Dream, Kyabram 1980. Dream vision accompanied by these words:        "The ducks fly over in the night        and create stillness in a body." I woke in that substratum of 'ah'ness before the Japanese consciousness was hived from the American Indian and the Celtic. I was swimming in the source like a delighted fly. Those ducks that were magicians, Gods. Godly-browed and eyed. Benefactors intent on a great task, sublimely serious. Angle of 'vision':        abreast of ducks Number of ducks:        three Size of ducks:        As large as a duck would appear to another duck, my human body length, a wingtip away to the first duck. Appearance:        Expression and size of eyes in emphasis, eyes particularly rounded and orb-like, colours focused and rich as on a newly hatched butterfly. A feeling that these were ducks among ducks. Spirit ducks. Either that, or that these were ducks more truly seen. Below the earth curved wreathed in opalescent mists. Mount Buffalo broke through to the East in the general direction of the birds' flight. It had advanced to become an active and obvious presence on the plain. Conscious that I was about to wake, I asked some intelligence of the time and place. I found myself formulating these words: "The ducks fly over in the night and create stillness in a body." This with the smell of irrigation water on a ploughed field in the nostril. Duck time. A still autumn night. And me journeying in those pre-dawn moments, perhaps borne along on that flooding water under the stars. So,        the ducks fly as one body        their presence is calming, bodily caring. Further it seemed that        the ducks were in possession of their dreaming        their dreaming sustained the world. The world and the ducks were of one issue        (the wings were spread to the visible world's edge, each beat of their wings stroked the scene below). Meanwhile the world gave off another light. It was night and yet I saw things in their sheen of dreaming. The words too were tissue of the vision, rushed from the same centre of stillness. The words, ducks, world, stillness and myself were in a body. A flock of ducks will strike water with an effect like that of a single handclap. In the dream they projected an even more profound harmony in flight. A harmony deriving from an inner stillness. They lulled not only themselves but, in Castaneda's sense, stopped the world. The world was struck with a wand again. The black duck has a beauty that is not immediately seen. A beauty that lies behind the perceptual screen that hid the gumtree from the painters, the aboriginal culture from our own. The discreet way of the black duck reflects the general lack of spectacle, the merging nature of Australian forms which is their true sublimity and grace. A grace discerned in low hills, ephemeral waters, untrampled earths. The brain waves of the black duck recede into the greater brain, the greater browns of the land. Published in The forest set out like the night (Black Pepper, 1995). The red flowering gum The ancestress South Western Australia, the oldest part of the continent, where the march of the gums began Where koalas were begotten And where many lifeforms forsook the march and consolidated instead. Here the largest seedpods, the largest and most colourful flowers. Gorgeous "primitives". Where some gums forsook the role of hero, empire, for that of the inner way. These are blooms perfected in the other side of our nature. Their show is numinous, beyond exuberance. In an introspective country these are the blooms of introspection. They do not come to meet us like the rose. We must come to them. Equal ourselves. The red flowering gum. A villager sedentary in its habits. Its seedpods cauldrons rich with the lore of place. So heavy that they do not transport. Grow where they fall. Its natural distribution less than twenty square miles. In ancient isolation it attends the rituals. Of all gums the most mannered, the most ornament with practice. The stilled Balinese gesture of the limbs. The flowers sitting impeccably as if in a vase. A correctness and stiffness in the disposition of the leaves. The image studied and miniature. The tree with the shell of a tortoise. Power of concentration. Concentration of power Published in The forest set out like the night (Black Pepper, 1995). The river redgum. Secular. The traveller without baggage. Odysseus. In youth lithe-limbed and lithe of mind. Leaves the freest strokes of a sumie painting. Flowers and seedpods tiny and efficient. Borne on the stream. Here the tiers and foliage so typical of Western Australian vegetation dispersed. Dispersion. Dispersion of form and habitat. Energy that is expressed. An easy gentle strength that gives way to grandeur and grace in old age. The confident voice of the Murray Darling Basin. That beneficent Arcady that cradled the largest aboriginal population before the sheep and wheat.        "The redgum rivers by the river"        "The redgum arcades" The river redgum. A dreamer too, like the ancestress. Quiet energies:        billabong, Deniliquin, grandiloquent, soliloquy        Denili lilly quin        Deniliquin, a place of water lilies and        billabongs The dreamer dreamed:            "the earth dreaming of redgums and gliding waters" Published in The forest set out like the night (Black Pepper, 1995). even by day the gum insists on breaking the light into a familiar mantle of stars as though the stars, banished from the sky by the sun, had come down to shelter on earth the leaves each pendant beings, rustling like silver birds in their throngs evening: gold flares when the wind is up, jangles, and shrinks to showers of orange sparks as the sun sinks while the deepest and dearest days linger there as coals, as the rosy flickers and drops of light's liqueur the sun is about to set; all through the stars have been kindling in the burnished crowns of the sugar gums the stars are arriving at their favourite spots, one by one they complete the evening migration just a few stars at first are bright, the sunset has faded and for perhaps half an hour the sky is its most ethereal blue the gums are blackest abstracts, magic letterings later the gaze of the stars will fall evenly over all the notes of the bellbirds and rosellas that have ascended the trails of the stars by day will have been succeeded by the star talk of frogs and crickets but presently the trees are unpainted by any light the air is still and quiet assembled in pure silhouette against the vaulted blue, the gums have receded into the finite legend and ribbon of the infinite Published in The forest set out like the night (Black Pepper, 1995). casuarinas:        swamp oaks, she-oaks, bull-oaks bull-oaks amongst redgums, expiring intergalactic breaths, the thread, the lexicon of a previous world, their essential lightness and shift after the great wet epochs of past ages the she-oaks were amongst the sea's first whispers over a dry inland in the absence of fire, the she-oaks steal back the gumtree is of fire and earth - has the form of flame the she-oak is of air and water - has the form of wind their song somniferous…………   shhhh               somniferous conifer               sea oak        and somni fir        they are the most pining of the pines they do not cast deep shade they are themselves floatings of shade smudges light pencilled shadings over the landscape they step behind and on the greyest ground they are hauntings of a former time ghostlier than gums before the rule of man and fire they ruled the dim they are the curtains that, parted, reveal the gum the gauze and the veil that the gum falls through the distance seen through their crazy window but at evening the she-oaks draw the light their soul steps out they are like sea spindle, sea sponges that soak up the deep orange, the last deep reds of the spectrum, as though their synthesis was there the light seeps in in a way that records its millions of years of vintage its long travel as though the trees had always stood there and the light was touching a light that had been colouring within, gathering potency creatures of light's beach light's quietest and furthest and loneliest light's last flurry and gathered filament succeeding the fires now flown from the eucalypts Published in The forest set out like the night (Black Pepper, 1995). the laugh of the kookaburra is sensed as the outermost gust of a laugh that is very deep heaven and earth split further asunder from the day of the first separation heaven drew off higher, the land grew thicker, more dense this is a land of deepened earth presence Kosciusko, Uluru, the grinding stone, the waterhole, rocks worn similarly smooth and dented all forms further composed under the vast dome a congregation of stones, mountains a congregation of mountains, stones the reclining kangaroo, the marsupial folds of the hills mountains huddled, recumbent, set a prolonged splitting of heaven and earth devising the attenuated and open structure of the gum throughout the flora devising the further distortion of leaves, the further skew and spacing of the leaf shapes' mandala, skew and elaboration of its clubs, hearts, diamonds, spades a twist through the leaves and shared rumination between all things a hoary whisper that affinity between tree, reptile, kookaburra and ruffian regard that is the wink of the country's inner geology the shaggy eye that looks back from banksia and hakea the eye of the emu, the eye of the goanna, eye of the stone curlew, the tawny frogmouth, the eye of the snake a land of reptiles, earth gliding forms and the platypus, echidna, bird species more closely derived from these the slack reptilian folds in the trunks of the lemon scented gums a match in the markings of stone curlew and ghost moth in the tassels of emu and she-oak, lyrebird plumes and fern fronds, forms of parrot and gumleaf the rockshelf acknowledging its surroundings, lines of plateau escarpments, and the smooth slab of the continent edged by the long cliff of the Bight each pattern of lizard and snake, each banksia leaf cutout, each scribble on the tree trunk a subtle dictation, an inner and over- painting of the whole mind, the whole country the white face of the heron clay daubed on with a frayed stick forms held until now in some even counter-sway in the dance of the atoms around the earth in an eddy of ocean and moonlight on heaven's floor Published in The forest set out like the night (Black Pepper, 1995). I find my spirit in the woodlands I am trying to make you see what I mean I am trying to make myself visible I am trying to make the woodlands visible the undiscovered forest I believe that if you would see me you would see me in the woodlands That you would see the woodlands and yourselves in the woodlands When we see the butterfly, the tortoise, the wombat's burrow, we are looking at ourselves The butterfly sees itself, sees itself in us as it sees itself in the sunlight, the rock and the blossom (which are in us) The lizard sees itself in the tree and the tree sees itself in the stars, the stars see themselves in us All the worlds answer us as they answer each other One place in the world sees itself in another I first see myself in the furthest scatterings of Australasia, where I see the furthest order again become visible, through outlines again and again repeated, in a distance of mauve, pale copper, of purple, in the furthest scatterings of the light Published in The forest set out like the night (Black Pepper, 1995). cascades of stars tumbling down to the wide land down from the wide sky then scattering as far and tiny wildflowers from horizon to horizon held aloft on slender filaments trembling over the fragile earth, itself petalled with tiny pebbles and fine feelings. we step as guests of the stars into the tree tops: the star forms of the gum blossoms are held aloft on the fine wires of the branches, the earth and stars again falling freely through the arrangement. we see repeated the spareness of Australian forms, their long career into the stars as slender trunks and stems. the plants that only just exist: below us a blue flowering vine with the tiniest leaves. from a slight distance it is no more than a pool of light or filter hovering over the sand and branches, drawing the whole picture through it earth, stars and flowers, the imagination of each working on each and allowing each their fuller coruscation Published in The forest set out like the night (Black Pepper, 1995) Galahs        The sky that changes at evening from grey to pink.        From pink to grey.        From grey to pink.        And the turning birds that turn the evening in. Published in The forest set out like the night (Black Pepper, 1995). "After rain the desert becomes a garden" Fascistic linguistic fucktwistik bullschwazlik! The desert is already a garden. The rain is a garden. After rain the desert is rain. When the garden has rained into the desert, the desert rains into the garden. Rain, Rain, The desert is fucking the rain. Published in The forest set out like the night (Black Pepper, 1995). I am a Thistle with Open Arms I am a thistle with open arms I caught fire in the valley The mountains took a long roll outwards They were a fan in my heart I caught fire in the valley In a dress of long flickers across the desert They were a fan in my heart We came to know more and rhythm of the beautiful fire region In a dress of long flickers across the desert Doing it for ages in the termite wild light We came to know more and rhythm of the beautiful fire region When we fly now, lower than hair on the body Doing it for ages in the termite wild light Dawn creeks go by - go by dawn creeks by twilight When we fly now, lower than hair on the body Even in the ditching the hollow dog makes his cave Dawn creeks go by - go by dawn creeks by twilight The mountains took a long roll outwards Even in the ditching the hollow dog makes his cave I am a thistle with open arms Published in The Shadow's Keep (Black Pepper, 1997). Quiet Ruin is the Conversation of the Bulbs Quiet ruin is the conversation of the bulbs Then axeman builds as rustman stalks them An apple seeming to the wasteful falls The old watertight roads have sandbars along their edge Then axeman builds as rustman stalks them For different reasons there might be things that curl up and things        that last The old watertight roads have sandbars along their edge The one melon ripes away in many ways For different reasons there might be things that curl up and things        that last So great, so flattery, so sand The one melon ripes away in many ways I'm looking for a reason to be born amongst the stars So great, so flattery, so sand I believe in life after death because things always are, they always        extend I'm looking for a reason to be born amongst the stars The everywhere the moon always was and rests I believe in life after death because things always are, they always        extend An apple seeming to the wasteful falls The everywhere the moon always was and rests Quiet ruin is the conversation of the bulbs Published in The Shadow's Keep (Black Pepper, 1997). Grasslands I saw the midge-like orchids in their sere places, their whiskered shades moving faintly at the edge of the clay I saw the midges I saw the sanderlings moving like sand I heard the tiny sighs of the grassbirds I heard the tiny airs of the grass I heard the rustle of its pale drifts I heard its fainting songs of faint places Published in John Anderson New and Selected Poems 1978-1997 (Zeus Publications, 2001). Unidentified Bird Night parcel          unidentified bird barrelling through on its own god's business corpulent and prompt The hour's low light deep green through its mottle of grey feathers The hour when the school oval became the Island of the Dead And you were pledged to that same dark upward current that is always striking the turrets of the cypresses Published in John Anderson New and Selected Poems 1978-1997 (Zeus Publications, 2001). Kalbarri, W.A. "They condense the pure abstraction of distance" - trees Kalbarri gorges invert the distance invite the distance in pull haul the distance down and in serene          spreading gorges         dipping dipped vegetation of the moon          moon heaths cypress crests          Rousseau-like silhouettes                         loose wires, broken springs step   steppe      brilliant flowers bursting the blue grey birds that are constants in the farmed lands of the East / here apprehension of them is reinvigorated ducks: "the cliffs lend that vista that paces and fledges each dip, makes the history of that flight visible" sweep of land, sweep of feathers extending to points beyond distance the inner plain        intensify the plain subtle, most easily abused landscapes - the wheat belts have that same dip Kalbarri gorge - elegance - understated cf Karajini - gashed - plunge - escape from distance - claustrophobic repel - not meant to be there Cape Range - more intense swellings of the plain's undulations coast - frank reef-side gorges lizards crinkling and shrivelling into the spinifex the moon casts sharp shadows on earth as the sun casts sharp shadows on the moon honeyeaters - their song the squeezing-out of joy - sheer joy it is the spinifex witch emu wren - panicked rapid flopping tumble what have you seen? - not a bird - not rising above stones, scurrying blown about dark shadow spider-like mouse-like phantom-like floppy swastika song - almost an insect's but you suspect a bird suspect ventriloqual because it turns up somewhere else but also like stars that have been dragged around in the mud empty spaces more welcoming in soft light faltering levels of applique - desert varnish veils West Aust shield lizards - the stones' pulse tapestry of earth cover animate, transference inspect every lizard pattern incipient gorges balconied around the hills decanting one onto the other looking down on the drama a cliff face opens squeezes Published in John Anderson New and Selected Poems 1978-1997 (Zeus Publications, 2001). Pilbara, W.A. Islanded geologically encased - like Wilpena Pound formation ensuing difference ** a beetle, geologically encased, a gorge, enbeetled gorge conforming, within the mountains - outside rim rather than issuing out, insect myall spinning, skidding on saltbush carpet slipped underneath prostration of saltbush sweeps trees      the wind had covered their trunks with fine white silks "underwater" quality of desert birdsong mesas, islanded by gorges black cockatoos - message sticks winged - caduceus starry sky perfectly evinced in the leaves metal desert      pinched iron ridges somewhere to disappear and appear from basal, hardest desert lazy parabolas, wire strata time's little wind persists log cabin smile buckled strata time very graphic here the earth's layers like rings of a tree like leaves of a book laid down and laid down like a graph      like a diagram very basic    you can plot/calculate your significance time represented in the same slabs year after year        perfunctory evenly deposited        factual and lying more or less as it was laid down as sediment at 180 degrees to the circumference of the earth beginning to buckle under its own weight but bored through       buckling like iron with heat and pressure but grubbed through big water making all time present steady, metered, not a touch of fancy basal, primary oppositions oppositions - greens of gum leaves / red rock      heartwood redgum    washed quartz red quartzite    white bloom trunk    born with mauve under and overtones snake dreams Published in John Anderson New and Selected Poems 1978-1997 (Zeus Publications, 2001). Holy Oh we saw those holy trees                                   (hush) holy trees we call them holy trees by the children's name those things called holy trees seven holy trees this morning where the creek turns beneath the raggled leaves seven holy trees born this morning beating in our palms Published in John Anderson New and Selected Poems 1978-1997 (Zeus Publications, 2001). About the Poet John Anderson John Anderson was born in 1948 and grew up on an orchard in Kyabram, Victoria. In a writing career spanning 25 years, he published three volumes of poetry: the bluegum smokes a long cigar (Rigmarole, 1978), the forest set out like the night (Black Pepper, 1995) and The Shadow's Keep (Black Pepper, 1997). The main subject of his poetry was the Australian landscape, and he examined it closely: the stones, the soil, the water and the living things, both large and small. He reclaimed the neglected places of this continent as well as the well-known ones, and from them he forged a new account of it and he made common cause with all poets who celebrate nature. Anderson's real inspiration came from his native land. From his Melbourne base he explored the continent, seeking out the secrets of desert landscapes, of roadsides and forests and waterways. He knew the seasons of the gums, the grasses and the insects. He described the interconnectedness of things, of stars drawing towards the earth and reaching down to the trees and stones, the leaf-forms and the landforms. John Anderson died, after a short illness, in 1997. His acclaimed second book, the forest set out like the night had earlier brought his understandings and sensibilities to the forefront of contemporary Australian poetry.    [Above] Photo of John Anderson by Emma Lew, 1997. I Next I Back I Exit I Thylazine No.1 (March, 2000)