Newry State Forest, 31 March
‘Destruction of world’s forests increased sharply in 2020’. The Guardian, 31.3.2021
‘simply squint/ till words do as bid.’ Kit Kelen
Checking GIS coordinates, but which coupe?
In search for the endangered Scrub Turpentine
and the Native Guava shrub, bush bashing
just find a cicada casing with a Lantana floret.
Neanderthals took care of the sick and the dead,
pollen clusters of different species of flowers
seed a grave in Shanidar cave, Iraqi Kurdistan.
They knew Mother Nature invoked passionately
by D on the forestry track, working to save us all.
The late afternoon sun is a brilliant sea urchin
spiking like a virus or the Greek sun god Helios
shown with rays shooting from his head, no –
more exactly starbursts, an optical diffraction
light shredded by the blades of a small aperture.
The trees like vertical slatted blinds procure privacy
for the sun-drenched distant hills. I can see the sea,
my legs are bleeding, a flock of Yellow-tailed
Black Cockatoos are crying in the lazy distance.