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Thylazine: The Australian Journal of Arts, Ethics & Literature                                                                                                                                  #8/thyla8k-ww AUSTRALIAN POETS SERIES 8 The Poetry of Warrick Wynne Selected by Coral Hull [Above] Photo of Warrick Wynne by Warrick Wynne, 2000. I Chaos I Episode in Landscape with Owl I Dead Shearwaters I Lakeside I Thylacine Sighted at Mt Martha I The Shape of A Fox I Cuttlefish I Chaos Fire paths, storms the interpretations of energy, perhaps one day it will be possible to build a super-computer powerful enough to predict, in real time the exact, intricate pattern filigreed and etched in space and liquid of a single splash, created, suspended momentarily like an installation piece from the petrel's purposeful dive into the clear bay. But I doubt it. Episode in Landscape with Owl For Marcus Water, resplendent in folds by the road reclines in silver, blue smoke under the trees in the distance. They've had some rain here, someone says. But it's hard to imagine the physical act of rain on this straight road, these open fields. Hard to imagine this not being what is permanent and authentic. Later, we spot an owl, rocking in sleep by the dark tar, and we stop. It wakes, eyes black and wide, its claws too big for its body. Somehow, we are made to take our eyes away for a moment, and it is suddenly gone in silence. In stillness, stopped by an empty road, the long lines of water shine like silver roads, leading somewhere else, slivering through flatness. As we move on, the owl, no, the whole episode of landscape, has an illusory quality about it. As if we were the only still things, the landscape moving through us. Dead Shearwaters Along the bric-a-brac jumble of copper coloured rocks the feathered soot bodies of bent-wing birds are the language of the firm and freshly dead. Or becoming feather-dusters and blowing away. And there are jellyfish, one like the perfect sculpted mould for real jelly, another, like a clotted heart veined with corals, or tough, cartilage-hard tumours plucked from a body Here is the shear-backed wing, the broken wing, sculpted shapes being buried by the sand like the prow of a ship. There are the broken arms of crabs, carnage or ethnic cleansing. This walk contains too much devastation, punctuated by these black feather full stops and the commas of the fallen. Published in The State of the Rivers and Streams (Five Islands Press, 2002). Lakeside At Lakeside Estate, ideas of walled cities: encirclement, containment. The fertile lake at the centre, decorated with pet ducks, slaughtered ritually for fun by bored teenagers, the circling street, brick veneers stringing out in the songlines of Bentleigh, weaving from the centre to the wilderness of the paddocks and the edges of known places. Here are layers over-riding the boundaries of the fields natural selections becoming blurred beneath the model of the birds; that broken line of pines was a windbreak once and miles from anywhere. Here again are the concentric circles of tradition, migratory patterns; young families streaming into the new walled city where explorers stood and wild ducks flew. Published in The Colour of Maps (Five Islands Press, 1995). Thylacine Sighted at Mt Martha He could imagine the Tasmanian Tiger, sighted somewhere, at the edge of a road beyond the lit houses, or the grass verge at the margin of a paddock scrub country that isn't worth farming, and never will be, creek banks, swamp land, the mouth of a river or stream. He could imagine that smooth animal from photos, prowling the edges of civilised places, its strange tracks clear on black sand, a dead sheep by Balcombe Creek, or falling under the swinging headlights of a shiftworker, on his way home late. It would be found, he knew, in a familiar place instantly recognisable, the strangeness falling from it like scales 'I've never seen anything like it before', he'd say 'It was a like a big fox. It had very large bat-like ears and a long tail like a fox. It ran off into Railway Reserve.' Published in The Colour of Maps (Five Islands Press, 1995). The Shape of A Fox For Grant In the beginning I thought all those nails were for puncturing the thing, nailing the fox to the wooden door. But of course it was the skin that was stretched around the edge of these nails to dry and cure. Someone must have nailed all these once, ordained the shape of future foxes, created the pattern for all to follow. And there must have been plenty of foxes too in the beginning, for the door is faded from where the light has streamed upon it, except for a darker newer looking patch in the shape of a fox where it was often dark, since this is where so many foxes fulfilled that shape. Published in Lost Things & Other Poems (Butterfly Books, 1990). Cuttlefish Early morning, Norman Bay, collecting cuttlefish at the high-tide mark, the surf a constant noise like traffic, the grey-green mountains diminished to smooth and shining sand and these drifting objects. Between the porcupine fish with its eyes removed neatly, and the jellyfish spread like the photograph of a splash, pieces of bone white and airy are pushed shoreward, and I become selective, pluck some from the sucking sand earnestly, follow my own tracks back; I favour the inner heel I notice, to where they stop suddenly and the sand is ridges rippling seaward. A wave has washed this spot, or something has rubbed my marks from the beach altogether. A new cuttlefish, once a squid, lies shining white and wet in their place. Published in Lost Things & Other Poems (Butterfly Books, 1990). About the Poet Warrick Wynne Warrick Wynne has been writing poetry for about fifteen years and has been published in a wide variety of literary journals both in Australia and overseas. He won the Red Earth Poetry Prize in 1992 and has been a runner up in several other poetry awards including the Mattara Poetry Prize administered by the University of Newcastle. Warrick is a member of the Fellowship of Victorian Writers (FAW) and the Poets' Union. Warrick teaches English and Literature at Toorak College, a K-12 school for girls on the Mornington Peninsula, forty kilometres south of Melbourne in Australia. He has written texts for students completing their final year of English.    [Above] Photo of Warrick Wynne by Warrick Wynne, 2000. I Next I Back I Exit I Thylazine No.8 (September, 2003)