FORESTS

I do not wish the children of my children to know only plastic rooms where simulations image human figures minuscule in a shimmer of trees.

Let imagination put its moratorium on the felling. These are forests of a mind that lives in body - trees inviting hands and hearts to lift.

JjdeG '94

THE WAMBENGER

Tree whisk of Wamby calls up squirrel, till you realise, Wrong hemisphere, look again -- gone, for dusk brings focus -- and breakfast. Somewhere in the gloammg she's demolishing beetles and flies. The one in our roof scrunches loudly, cockroaches diminish, mice keep their heads down when this mother of seven is out

There are probably seven. The front porch seethes with their weaving; noses, daws, whiskers, are glimpsed; brighteyes peep between weatherboards inspecting our scalps; bodies flatten for nosedown or tails spread for leaps till we think we are back in Beijing, the acrobats taking our breath.

We wonder how many are males; how long they will live before mating -- the grand final fling (he dies from his efforts, she tends the nest)

When they're little, though, both of them fly; feathertail up as they cover the ground with their speedy stop-hop, stop-hop, angled as rudder in currents of air when they're after a moth.

Five years they've shared our hut on the hill with its wooden walls hollow, ceiling shallow. The red-gum and jarrah's receding. The shire issues edicts -- NO SHACKS, ensures brick-and-tile houses fit only for humans.

From five years of breeding where do the wambengers go?

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JjdeG © '99

HERITAGE

In this forest she-oaks filter dawn, brush the furry-leaved hazels, shine at the snotty-gobbles.

Tall trees sing to the wind, open to chill rain, dip and wave their canopies, hum like the sea.

Their tops spin leaves in space it has taken six of my lifetimes to reach.

Sounding the thin, high notes of temple bells birds call territory of leaf, bark, twig.

Where rotting branches deepen the forest floor continues its exploration of form - thrusts fungi in mini umbrellas, waxy clusters of fingers.

In the giving hollows of the oldest trees night-life renews its strength in curls of sleep.

At a particular moment - perhaps tomorrow -men of my species will move. Ant-like the bites of their oil-driven chains will empty the air.

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Jenny de Garis in Giblett Block of the karri forest near Pemberton In Western Australia July, 1994 at the time of the first clearfelling

RAIN DANCE

Noon quiet settles into an older silence through percussion of cicadas.

Among the soughing of trees a red-tailed black cockatoo rasps like a branch.

Gathered in groups even young jarrahs hold slow conversations.

Sun textures a softness of grey and green in contrasting verticals.

Unlike some forests jarrah does not reach for the sky -would rather ask sky down.

Let these trees be left to invite rain -They are creators of cloud.

Dance then, leaves and ferns. Swing fronds and spines in the wind. Call down showers -

Call down pourings -Prevent for a week, or a day, the men with their saws -

Their scheme to chop your song, fall your dance -

Cut your patient falling of rain, our salt-free creeks.

Dance for us all.

Jenny de Garis © 1994