BEAUTIFUL YUROKE RED RIVER GUM

For Northlands Secondary College Mobile Rebel School

Sometimes the red river gums rustled

in the beginning of colonization when
Wurundjeri
Bunnerong
Wathauring
and other Kulin nations
sang and danced
        and
            laughed
            aloud

Not too long and there are

fewer red river gums, the
Yarra Yarra tribe’s blood becomes
the river’s rich red clay

There are maybe two red river gums

a scarred tree which overlooks the
Melbourne Cricket Ground the
survivors of genocide watch
and camp out, live, breathe in various
parks ’round Fitzroy and down
town
    cosmopolitan
        St Kilda

And some of us mob have graduated

from Koori Kollij, Preston TAFE,
the Melbin Yewni

Red river gums are replaced

by plane trees from England
and still
    the survivors
            watch.
© 1999, Lisa Bellear
From: Landbridge: Contemporary Australian Poetry, John Kinsella (ed.)
Publisher: FACP, 1999

Seeing Snow for the First Time

Yong Shu Hoong

It is strange
how snow makes food
out of everything!
Scattered across desert plains,
it anoints little sand stones
and monumental rocks.
But all I'm envisioning
are frosted pastries,
and coffee cakes cloaked
in generous icing.

I am either poetic or hungry.

And snow in the sky

is another thing:
it flies,
carrying the wind.
One flake
crashes upon my nose,
and in heaven
an angel must be missing
a sequin.

Published in Isaac (1997)

Pine Tree in Spring

by Chinua Achebe

Pine tree
flag bearer
of green memory
across the breach of a desolate hour

Loyal tree
that stood guard
alone in austere emeraldry
over Nature’s recumbent standard

Pine tree
lost now in the shade
of traitors decked out flamboyantly
marching back unabashed to the colors they betrayed

Fine tree
erect and trustworthy
what school can teach me
your silent, stubborn fidelity?

Looking West, Late Afternoon, Low Water

The typical tidal range, or difference in sea level between high and low tides, in the open
ocean is about 2 ft (0.6 m), but it is much greater near the coasts.—Desk encyclopaedia

Our beach was never so bare. Freak tide,

system fault, inhuman error, will it

never stop falling? After dark, said

the tables of high water and sunset

pasted on the wall, which don’t deceive.

Come on down for a walk while there’s light.

A wall of pale green glass miles above

head high alongside, complete with fish

crossing, is what will have been the wave

once it has broken. Leviathan is

the beached cachalot we left Bob Falla

filleting for science, the ebb to wash

away these fifty years, each one smaller

than the last. Come down, this is today

delivered factory fresh, in colour

heated by the late sun. Time to try

looking on the bright side, or join those

Great God! (says the poem) who’d rather be

suckled in a creed outworn: but whose

cast-off cult’s to be the lucky one?

Great waters, unfinished business, done

blind to the deadline. From that rock, to

this tree was tapu and it sticks. Thin

pickings, Tangaroa, this is pakeha
story time, only Okeanos and
sister Tethys having it off; the way

they love makes hairy cliff-hanging seas

roll drums on the sand, the 3-metre swell

flat on the seabed bangs the pubes,

very ancient and fishlike they smell

close to. Divine all the same. Dangerous,

not to be approached, least of all by

mortal man whose years are four-score plus

tomorrow night. While I count the three

strong swimmers carried past out of sight

round the North Rocks the whole shoreline shakes

underfoot again, dead friends call out

not to be heard. Look west, what looks

back is blood-orange nightfall, the stooped

sky drowning another sun overboard

where the horizon was: till it snapped

those deep-sea moorings and will be heard

oncoming, the sound of a scream, tsunami!

tsunami! splintering deadwood of the boat

I lost half a life ago, swept

away with a judgment on the work

she’s amateur built but your friends won’t know.

Last seen, one inflatable rescue

craft stood on its tuck, bows to skyward

in fast failing light, a turning tide.