7
Illawarra Wandering
14 March, 2022
This work is interactive and best experienced on a desktop.
I invite you to navigate this poem in a curvilinear fashion. Read left to right, right to left, top to bottom, outside to in and back again. Let verbs become nouns and nouns disappear into the wilderness.
Music can be heard here. Please adjust your sound. The text reveals an audio archive of field recordings and looped soundbites. Click underlined words to orchestrate your own urban bushland symphony. Sound loops will refresh as you move through each segment of the poem.
• • •
city undressed our first ballad affinity
mapped traced sequenced life heard
rising we say Eora to earth
a naturism whose sky welcomes
lingoed council circumference draped
pitch cicada hootenanny heat our poultice
longing distance love act entangled
song line imagined connects both us
lifetimes idyllic outstretched wings follow
cloud passing rivers guide home

old gods play here living aloud our
quietly grooved warmth over sovereign
sunsoaked hearts setting adrift we
farewell botany bay hoodling wink
we kiss fire seasons swept air lips
between inhuman voices gently held
each other green in every sense affiliate
we take in all tone textured histories
as believers our blood thickened banksia
scars heal we’re renewing untethered
a new day an old name porous

illawarra passerine manna epithet sloping
scribble gum postcards strange
spirit lit talc sediments crest sand stone
through law flows below islands
of sweet clay bed sleep rocking
limb bends that perfect cut strength
wood borne memory we carve
clappies for the kids weave basket
for the bubs protect other ripples
you spoke deep fibres florets rainbow
us fullas visiting see faces in this ridge

following shallow salving streamlets
taking turns splash and clarity bubbles
fountainous in each footprint for you
I scribe the notes you photograph
lorikeet boisterous squawk and seedbound
myth making our eye filling bellies
with firepassing inspect each stone
left unopened a chest of bark story fed
necters in anticipation in the cool crevices
whose burning reveals sweet earth
wet becoming cool charcoal scented
a word in the soil possessed reminds
we need to rekindle our safe
conduct through this territory

grass trees utter primordial airs turned
sun dipped whispers through root filter
unfold fungi system springs turf eyes
in this salt faired harbour have you
heard curlews have returned their travels
carrying our wild life wandering fingers
entwined twilight flowing my love wave
shimmer over the crest hallowed horizon
where tongues we let go languid tilt
we hum together unison drift without sail

hot nightfall pressed air sky brewing
suspended star strings unwind deliverance
electric light as we stand ankle deep in
tears in earth rot and leaf mush
our clapsticks striking long time depth
synchronous breath ripple and the malaluaca
councils shudder ground and water
sweeping moon eyed clearness

we take our bow mend this hallowed
meeting place seeking alluvium solutions
sip underflows quenching throats
with song old as ice ages erupt
for the fish gods mercurial ephemera
bubbling free bodied enlivened we tread
head above the deep green
sub-heavens and bask in our own power
