Simon Brod
Errinundra
‘…the oldest and largest Shining Gums known to exist.’ [Visit Victoria website]
With a silent prayer
not to be bitten or stung,
us-two step into the forest,
tapping the ground with our walking-sticks
tunk, tunk, tunk
We don’t want to surprise, or be surprised—
by deadly things.
Sporadic laughter erupts—
monkey-voices of kookaburras.
We look up, curious, but foliage is thick.
Our sticks bounce pleasantly on hard earth,
tell our hands it’s OK.
The going is easy,
easier than in the forests of our imaginations,
tunk, tunk, tunk
as if the trees part to show the way.
Strange sounds arrest our ears—
cockatoo’s rusty gate,
bellbird’s squeaky door,
whipbird’s slow-charge laser weapon—
interrupting us-two with newness
as being in the world for the first time.
From towering trunks
the canopy rises to perpetual blue
and sun cascades,
spills columns of silver and green
onto drowsing treeferns
where cuckoos telegraph dot-and-dash warnings of our approach,
and crimson rosellas, busy in the branches, break off their palaver
to watch and listen
tunk, tunk, tunk
while at ground level
creatures crawl and creep unseen
but not unheard,
rustle leaves
close enough to touch
tunk, tunk, tunk
sending our hearts scurrying.
Us-two are walking hunched,
wary of groans and snaps that tumble from high boughs,
knowing we are discordant here
as we descend
ta-tunk, ta-tunk, ta-tunk
through purple shadows.
Step by step
air thickens,
leans into us-two
tunk
until we come to silence.
We have entered the presence of the King.
His bark shines blinding
and His extent is unmeasured:
us-two outstretched, finger to finger,
would struggle to reach even half-way round,
nor can our eyes scale His crown.
Swept up in a deeper, older flow,
us-two begin to know what dust we are made of.
We let go our sticks to free our hands,
feel the rhythm of thousand-years skin,
its warm roughness,
its twists, folds, and cracks,
and find we too are resonance, are pulse.