Lockdown, Saturday, Aug 28th
Looking for a spider, Jagun
We go looking for a spider for Heli, a Finnish friend, an artist
who loved the webs we photographed a few days ago.
Her curiosity has crossed the oceans, but without dew
this morning, the webs are hard to see, against
so much apparent chaos and unwritten beauty.
We examine a few, but no sign of the owners.
I can see Wyn’s breath, her soul departing in some fantasy
deep in the forest. Should I start writing fiction?
The trees stand still for the birds, a Yellow Thornbill bears its
yellow rump, a pair of Grey Fantails skitter over my head,
showing off their black and white fans, white marks on
their dark head, white throats and a yellow-beige belly,
blue-black back, the birds are excited, as if on a sugar high,
summer soon. A Banksia has cracked.
On the track between Boatshed Beach and the Humpies
we see what others have found. It’s been here for over a decade,
an ever-changing offering to the god of fairly interesting stuff,
fragments of worlds. It’s hard to believe so much has been lost.
Wyn collects some Smilax berries for her eco inks,
from the Council area, not the reserve. Heath is flowering.
It’s the weekend, the beach has a few humans
and also has an offering as always, a Pipi emptied
of its living just a few centimetres under our feet.
Black birds at pace cross the dunes stitched by prostrate wattle,
a Black-faced Cuckoo Shrike tracked by a Drongo, the name ruined
by a racehorse which never won a race a hundred years ago.
Scaly-breasted Lorikeets skim by, wings kicking emeralds alive,
under-wings firing a vibrant orange-red of Van Eyck angels.
We need to change their names, so many names: Green Possum
(though I swear one looked green to me); stick rat; electric eel;
Victoria Falls; Egypt (in Buckinghamshire); Rome and Florence
(in Italy): Liverpool (in Costa Rica): Brighton (in WA); the United
Nations; the Democratic Republic of Korea / the Congo;
Great Britain; New England; New South Wales; Valla Beach;
John Bennett (boring), puce, phlegm, bottle, spring, summer, god . . .
~
Back home in the garden, the names fit back where they belong,
a tree fern unravelling, the fruit of a Native Gardenia resists ripening,
the orange tree is a blizzard of blossom about to stretch out.
