Oyster Creek Walk, Oct 6

We go slowly for a male on the track, early settler light

pierces the forest, picking out branches, running paths,

swaddling shrubs decorated in silver webs.

We hear, then see, a Drongo mobbing a Grey Goshawk,

a Brush Turkey crosses the track, it looks English

carpeted in brown leaves dropped in the dry,

but this is ‘the bush’, that mythic strategy of white Australians

to belong.  I’m not even a bushie, not even black.

After the rain, Oyster Creek has cleared,

two Catbirds are munching berries, orange trumpet flowers

from a mistletoe scatter the poem without end