The Grave on Lowe Isle
Beneath the vine-scrub tree where pigeons coo a lullaby and palm trees sigh by water’s edge stone arms enfold your decayed body your heart space clasped in clam-shell hands reach for a far-off land Calling.
Adventurous daughter what led you to this tiny cay? voiceless stone confounds who venture to this dot of sand did you possess a soul that wandered in futile scientific search though body surrendered remaining with the nidicolous pigeon Calling.
Exiled sister did you shed suffocating bindings of Victoriana a suffragette escaping exchanging the satin cage for mud, mould mosquitos did you leave a mother Calling.
battling the exterminators
eradicating
the mute, the unheard
invisible ecosystems
the wallaby, the red-tail cockatoo 500 yr old karri felled
and left
homeless
a debt owed 
complacent lives provoked
opening eyes, opening minds
to a thing of beauty
once lost, gone forever.
Stump of C700 yr-old tree.
49 people stand upon it.
Wattle Block – January 1999
