A Fiercer Light

Wattle Point

Bearded in red-brown
weed scraps drifting,
easy in the sheltered bay,
lazy wavelets flap, flop
languorously lap,
mantle labiates,
tongue liquids, then, oh,
giggle and shush, push
the odd, offered jelly up
grey beige of lake-bank
speckled with the scatter
of miniscule pipi shells,
bleached scoops and bumps
crunching underfoot.

But round the shouldered corner
under the wind's influence
rasping, impatient they race and rear
almost-waves, tear at the bars
of grey sand holding them at length
from the tangles of roots and boughs
stripped  and whitened
hard gum bones,
sea-treated timber we step
among, round, over

and big-trunk bridges
to nowhere  - from land
to the water's fay fray -
deep-ridged bark intact,
seem asleep, oblivious,

garlanded with adorning
pig-face, pretty as a wayside
couch for some visiting Titania
from the salons of academia,
to Europeanize and dignify.

Eventually the choice is up
or along  jumbled boulders
that defend a rearing bastion.
We concede lake to lake, climb
to find a glade ringed
by tall, slender wattle
 - carpe diem -
(but the only song is mozzie)
and burly loaded banksia,

one gnarly individual fallen
on the bank's little precipice,
awaiting a fire
that may well never come,
still clutching tight dead leaves
and all its seeds;
though one pod's forced open -
cockle-mouth, gaping skyward.

......................

*Banksia have evolved with bushfire for 60 million years or more.  In most species of Banskia the bulky seed follicles require the stimulation of fire to open.