Situated between the realms of the real and the fantastic, this collection of eco-poetry relays the ferocious power and long-lasting effects of extreme weather events such as cyclones, hurricanes, and typhoons. Exploring the period before, during, and after a cyclone’s arrival, these emotionally charged poems travel from trampled forests and torn rooftops to the inner heartache and emotional distress felt among disaster survivors. This poetic and psychological journey through trauma explores the deep connection between human beings and their environment.
Situated between the realms of the real and the fantastic, this collection of eco-poetry relays the ferocious power and long-lasting effects of extreme weather events such as cyclones, hurricanes, and typhoons. Exploring the period before, during, and after a cyclone’s arrival, these emotionally charged poems travel from trampled forests and torn rooftops to the inner heartache and emotional distress felt among disaster survivors. This poetic and psychological journey through trauma explores the deep connection between human beings and their environment.
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Overview
Situated between the realms of the real and the fantastic, this collection of eco-poetry relays the ferocious power and long-lasting effects of extreme weather events such as cyclones, hurricanes, and typhoons. Exploring the period before, during, and after a cyclone’s arrival, these emotionally charged poems travel from trampled forests and torn rooftops to the inner heartache and emotional distress felt among disaster survivors. This poetic and psychological journey through trauma explores the deep connection between human beings and their environment.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781876756734 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Spinifex Press |
| Publication date: | 10/01/2009 |
| Pages: | 96 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.00(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.40(d) |
About the Author
Susan Hawthorne is a poet, an aerialist, a research associate at Victoria University, and the cofounder and publisher of Spinifex Press. She is the author of Bird, The Butterfly Effect, and Unsettling the Land.
Read an Excerpt
Earth's Breath
Where Was Earth's Breath, and Blood, and Soul?
By Susan Hawthorne
Spinifex Press
Copyright © 2009 Susan Hawthorne,All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-876756-73-4
CHAPTER 1
Breathless Calm
During a breathless calm a mysterious northerly swell set in. To ears accustomed to the silence and the musical whisperings of a sheltered bay, the roar and burst of the breakers of a wind-forgotten sea suggested a confused mental picture — a blending of black and grey without form.
— E. J. Banfield, Last Leaves of Dunk
Timescale
Take a trip to the tropics:
lie on the beach, snorkel the reef, walk the
rainforest
it can all be done in just a few days —
you see and you think you see
but only time brings other ways of seeing
Take a month in the tropics:
a month when rain falls every day
ground squelches, mould grows on clothes
paper wilts with damp and the sky stirs wind
Take a year in the tropics:
watch the seasons swell —
the dry crackles and the rainforest opens up
sunbirds build their nests in doorways
lizards crunch the undergrowth
Take twenty years:
you are sure to see a cyclone or two —
you learn the signs fast, butterfly hordes and stillness
roaring rain and heaping seas where white foam
tumbles
Take today:
a perfect day in front of a mirror sea —
looks can deceive
just wait and see.
Frigatebirds
Fregata minor
The first rainstorm
of the wet season —
two umbrellas folding
and unfolding
plunging seaward
frigatebirds in an
aerial pas de deux
skimming sideways
smooth as the glide
of a French waiter
skipping over
and beneath one another
like thrown stones
on a silent sea.
Today the sea is
roiling, waves breaking
over invisible rocks.
The rain gauge is
overfilled and rising
meanwhile the rumpled
umbrellas unfurl and rise again.
Ourobouros
Liasis olivaceus
The olive python beside the drive
is in a digestive state
having swallowed the world
swallowed the wallaby
body coiled between
branches, almost invisible.
Bicton Hill
Consider the geometry of the spiral
Fibonacci Pythagoras Archimedes
a nautilus shell a sunflower
the curl of a cyclone
walk the spiral path
to the top of Bicton Hill —
walk recursively
in parallel
the sea eagle rises hillside
through the thermals
its way faster and smoother —
the walking path is open
and shaded, rough and flat
white cockatoos screech their
flight over the tree tops
a flight of squawked delight
small seed pods, bright
coloured leaves — red
yellow, green — dot the way
step around the mound
left by the cassowary, the red
fruits of palms digested
this forest has survived more
cyclones than any human
will endure, its tall trees
grounded by vines and
keeled buttressed roots
so many lives at each storey —
canopy, trunk, root — the earth
beside it hosting those ancient
cycad palms grown tall with time
circle the hill looking
out over tropical beaches
island resorts, farms and forests
the finger of the Clump
points seaward, lies low
on the sea, shelters the curl
of Boat Bay where dugong
graze and developers dredge
plans for a pointless marina
this hill with its layers of life
— fruit, flowers, insects, birds —
will go on being what it is
buzzing life inside its own zone
the hill a cone of activity
a monument of solidity
Goodijalla
Haliaeetus leucogaster
Looking up from your desk, you see goodijalla
soaring to the sound of a Russian concerto
heavy keyboard with grand sweeps of sound
accompanying long slow eagle wing beat
You dream of freewheeling
threading air through wingtips
Goodijalla, at home over sea, cliffs, rainforest
each afternoon two great eagles fly along
the ridge where the house sits
heaving wings through air, restless as the waves —
in storm, air carries its own weight
on days of sunshine
calm as a whisper
it is light like the blue
of a child's nursery
You move out onto the deck
sit watching the weight of air change.
Sunbird
Nectarinia jugularis
Sunbirds juggle air, zoom the light breezes
spring on fencewires and twigs.
Six thrill seekers
swift as a storm front
dart into heliconia panicles
hang from the lobster petal
sundipping, sucking nightdew
bouncing back to flight.
In the crossroads of the house
a sunbird is building her nest.
She carries in all the hardware
leaf, feather, vine, twig, seedheads
bark strips, one looped
another layered, a helix of debris
turned architectural.
Adding to the string, building on
building out, building down
then —
a leaf and twig porch
that latest extension, feathers inside
cushioning for the tiny life to come.
Anthem to the green tree frog
Litoria infrafrenata
Your croak wakes me from deathlike sleep
just as the seasons pause to reincarnate.
3 am and the world hinge is swinging: opening
closing, the live and the dead are parting.
You wake the dead croaking through the layers
of evolution from your spot next to the screendoor.
The Mandukya is in my ears, the brahmins
and the frogs chanting their circular breathing.
Daily I wonder at the painted glee of your
colour, green so green it would make the Irish
envious — I find you sitting in camouflage
on the edge of a leaf or, as tonight, belly-flat
against the glass door waiting for insects —
I've found you visible as daylight, as still
as the soughing night air atop the iron railings.
You play tricks on tourists hiding inside the flange
of the toilet bowl so forever after they'll see
those tiny flat-ended hands grasping —
it's humour and the joy of colour — and of
course the transforming midnight croak.
Year's door
ear to light / standing at the year's door
an insect fluttering inside / a frog at the year's opening
in that tiny space / the space between
lacuna for sound / the scream of a tree frog
amphibious life / the gap the metaxu
in two worlds / Janus and Ganesha
door gods / inside outside together
dark with / light at its edge
ear insect fluttering / door frog screaming
batwings in a cave / trapped scream
one wing inside / one leg on the other side
of the dark / body perched in the gap
flight to light / leap to dark
beating wings / bounding legs
panic in my head / terror in its voice
an echo / in the stillness
Sealife
Butterflyfish and seamoth float as you turn
fullcircle undersea. The sea is lucent green
the day you become a fish.
The ocean is the first and last frontier when storms
approach
as sea scales grow to wavelets, from horse-crested
waves
to turbo white foam, froth and spray.
Dugong shelter in bays like rocks among the seagrass
coral lies exposed at the reef's edge
as vulnerable as damselfish with sweetlips.
Night noises
A long time ago, some god went troppo
in a frenzy of design working up
the rhinoceros beetle. Slam, bash, crack —
it's the sound of failed aerodynamics.
A loud hiss. That same rhinoceros
beetle on its back, legs kicking helpless
to roll or crawl, belly up, feelers flailing
screaming for the hand of god.
The exoskeleton hard as plastic
shiny as ebony but not the brightest
beetle on the block. You pick him up
examine that horn adorning his head
marvel at its baroque excess. You crawl
into bed to the chatter of a family of geckos.
The ones on the white wall are as pale
as plaster. Just as sleep is taking you
a loud thud shocks your eyes open. Dragged
from bed, you stumble out with headlamp torch
to divine the tempest — that tree frog again.
Across the fence bush hens scrabble and squawk.
There are silences in the night — as moth
wings sift past your face, as an owl
swoops between branches or a golden
orb spider waits, veiled in intricate architecture.
Storm birds
1. Scythrops novaehollandiae
At rest it looks like a boat stranded in a tree
in flight a crucifix
this bird that holds the record for its size
this surveyor with its angry red eye.
Storm birds, that's what they say
cuckoos, that's what they are
three of them, black against
the setting sun, crying a throaty song.
Last night the skies opened
this morning it rained yet harder
answering the storm bird's call.
2. Numenius madagascariensis
Curlews are calling
presaging wind wail out of stillness.
Silent for weeks
their cry is an agony
the keening wind of dispossessed souls
only stories of the dead unravel
the call of these birds haunting night.
The moon past full
night has emptied a bucket of stars
and the birds still call.
Butterflies
Papilio Ulysses and Ornithoptera priamus
1.
The blue-winged sailor
and the green birdwing
float in on storms —
they like a depression.
A complex of strange
attraction, Psyche
is deserted on a mountain shelf
banished with Zephyr, the west wind.
Coloured dots
rise before the eyes —
like an aura of migraine
or seizure.
The weather
is fitting, cyclonic
not myoclonic;
hectoring.
2.
Butterflies circle
ringing the breezes
orbiting earth from the Amazon
to this Pacific coast.
Windwhirl
music of the spiral spheres
wings in airdrift
butterflies betray the coming storm.
Warning
The warning came four days ahead:
cyclone heading in —
but people have lives to live
and the dinner was not postponed
the celebration of season's change
harvest of fruit from tree and vine.
The warning came three days ahead:
on screen the colours of infrared —
you talk of the curl on the sea's edge
aware in a way of what's in store
you know it's not the same
for those who've been here before.
The warning came two days ahead:
the day itself no caveat —
calculate the weight of wind speed
all superlatives already stolen
by cyclone categories one and two
you cannot weigh any more.
The warning came a day ahead:
cattle standing in a ring
rump out, calves surrounded
wind churn will not move them.
Feast of the senses
The day before the storm
the people of Innisfail
are dancing in
the street, making music
eating tropical fruits —
rambutan yellow and red
mango and mangosteen
crimson dragon fruit and durian
sour sop and Davidson plum
the human taste mimicking
the cassowary — a bird with a
blue bobbing head, a hard
helmet on top, red wattles
and black feathers — the big
bird's kick is as ferocious
as a Category-5 cyclone.
Honey to heliconia
The earth breathes in
holds its breath for a whole day
while we run to prepare
for the exhalation.
A cyclone crouches
flowers bloom
leaf and petal
as if life will go on for ever
a climax of blooming
never so beautiful as today
red green orange pink
against the sea scales
sunbirds have been
following their thrill-seeking
hearts from
honey to heliconia
the horizon is quiet
the air so summer still
no lisp of baby's breath
on our faces
but the web site shows
the huddle beyond sight
tie down the pot plants
in a ribbing of rope
tie the ladder rig the house
pack everything that
moves into the mud room
contemplate the vines
strangling the trees
like the wrenching squeeze
of old Laocöon
we talk over the video
as if it's the last day
of the world and yet
how can we believe it?
you in your flower dress
a camouflage against
the coming wind —
you are weeding:
a lifetime habit
the torch ginger
are growing all on their
own no help from us
butterflies — Ulysses and
birdwing — cavort in the
low pressure rings as the
sun sinks the wind begins
to trek our annihilation
Earth's Breath
They say that a great wind is sweeping the earth.
They say that the sun is about to rise.
— Monique Wittig, The Guérillères
Earth's breath
Breath is an origin story
before breath is non-existence
winds ride the edge of the storm
cloud messengers galloping loud
orchestral kettle drums beat.
Summer has been long
its breath has spanned millennia
and now comes the rain
the storm, the raging
rotten breath of cyclonic winds.
Myths are made of such noise
the rampages of Heracles
have filled our childhood ears
the violence of men and gods
he sneezes and we all fall down.
Who will be Delilah, brave enough
to calm Samson with a pair of
scissors, his long hair fallen
trampled like old vines that
strangle the biggest trees?
We are not so lucky with
Larrikin Larry, no shears large
enough to make his pate shine
as we watch, the ground turns bald
with his blunders through the undergrowth.
A shredder over his shoulder, Larry
larks about turning bark and leaves
to confetti and in his next breath
plays graffiti artist, pasting every
wall door and window.
But even wind needs to draw breath
a moment's stillness, earth's smoko —
then we hear the trampling across the roof
the flue knocked off, the guttering
torn ripped and discarded
as Larry changes direction, running rings
widdershins, bellowing earth's grief
no longer at play, this brat is serious
his blood has curdled, our souls are rattled
ears drumming against bawling Larry.
Cyclone time
when earth exhales
we inhale, hold our breath
as that great turbine of wind
rolls over us
three hours we sit
nursing the rising wind
the power goes out
the TV light extinguished
through the window
trees gyrate
wailing to the wind's howl
fascinated in devilish thrall
darkness lopes across the void
of sea in tormented uncertainty
stark-eyed watchfulness
grips us and curiosity listens
6 am we look at one another
gather the bedclothes
move pillows doona
dog into the bathroom
you have the spot by the loo
I have the towel racks
wind thrashes, sky lightens
to grey, the air a roaring
bulldozer in the room
night's stride awash, flecked
with salt I sit in the door jamb
you are videoing
the dawn of a new world
a world of strewn trees
matted leaf torn rooves
metal dress flapping
the dog sleeps on, curled into her
own tight dream 7.30 am
wind turns, limbs snap in fright
lying down for the wind no longer works
light dribbles in, time drags by
I'm reading poetry the space
before me a thinking space
outside a tree branch wings
past the window its leaves
slashing the sky, inside a strange
equilibrium holds me still
in a state of cosmic acceptance
corrugated roof
slams into the garage wall
guttering spills its contents
the down pipe is down
the path spattered confettied
in the pall of wind we poke
our heads into the air
trepidation stalls our steps
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Earth's Breath by Susan Hawthorne. Copyright © 2009 Susan Hawthorne,. Excerpted by permission of Spinifex Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Prologue: South Mission, 1918,Breathless Calm,
Timescale,
Frigatebirds,
Ourobouros,
Bicton Hill,
Goodijalla,
Sunbird,
Anthem to the green tree frog,
Year's door,
Sealife,
Night noises,
Storm birds,
Butterflies,
Warning,
Feast of the senses,
Honey to heliconia,
Earth's Breath,
Earth's breath,
Cyclone time,
Eye of the storm,
Into the aftermath,
Eyewall,
How still the world,
Canticle,
Helicopter breath,
Lifting the roof,
Chaos across the land,
Maruts: storm demons,
Slash and burn,
Body roar,
Fool's Lear,
Frenzied,
Shattered dreams,
The cyclone inside,
Dancing pair,
Three saints,
Moondark,
Forest,
Cassowary types,
Ark,
Candlesticks,
Wind's Rasp,
Wind's rasp,
Yugantameghaha,
Sista Katrina,
Bhumiheen,
Irrawaddy speechless,
Hide and seek,
Wind mind,
Notes,
Acknowledgements,