Nor can I know
when the fruit dove or the leech
first found themselves in rainforest time

or when the pink leaves of this red cedar
stretched through the canopy
fifty metres above, limiting light

but not birdsong and the air
cooling my skin under the tips
of ferns nestled up the trunks.

Over the relic of hot rock
on Dorrigo Mountain, water falls
from the sky, sudden as found bliss.

Kathryn Fry

 

Kathryn Fry has poems in various anthologies, including Australian Love Poems, A Slow Combusting Hymn, Watermark and the Newcastle Poetry Prize anthologies of 2014 and 2016.

© 2018