Published 20 August 20215 September 2021 · Friday Features / Friday Poetry / Main Posts Poetry | The forests died back last year … Declan Fry … geological time collapses gently as if we could follow the charts of rising and incomprehensibly vast temperature, and know the rivers melted long ago. At some point in the past you have to meet the future. Our capacity to absorb expanding timelines resolved into the written record of all geology and substrate fossilised like the falling leaf you watched turning and turning, angling for purchase on the wet oval ground of Balfe Park. (Address: Wurundjeri Country Brunswick East Naarm, VIC continent christened Australia 3057.) Anticipating ones and zeros (the origin of binaries – merci, Microsoft) two instruments in unison played a solemn tune: the low rumbling rhythm of firetrucks in March and the high note of the Pliocene marbled and mottled and yearning, their music discernible from space (so they say). But oh say can you see my house from up there? Turtle Island just an island of real-time satellite imaging. Metallic dishes tracking smoke across the Sino-Russian border where two fire regimes meet and make up. The peat fog of Indonesia convalescing resumes toward Malaysia via Singaporean detour where eight million lightning strikes occur daily. Ecological aberration like recurring product placement – You are now sailing Spaceship Earth. Some of us are preserved in the geological record, the heat of lightning collapsing grains of sand into skeletal tubes. Still – some planets burn longer soothed by timelines into which antelope and koala were led. Warp-speed reproductions playing hide-and-seek, learning not to yield to atavism, the stubborn temptation toward death’s slow feed because who would win? Not us – this planet has more practice ←insert line break (hundreds of millions of years, give or take). Plants and animals harnessing the mechanics of flames, a reproductive potential decipherable in the landscape. So we have learned to live with it: the Michelin-starred restaurant its twenty different heats for haute cuisine. Flicker of flame – ignition of light coolly prompting fire – fresh arrivals – and the yielding of readymade recipes for fine soufflé. Overland’s Friday Features project is supported by the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund. Declan Fry Declan Fry is a writer, poet, and essayist. Born on Wongatha country in Kalgoorlie, Declan Fry has written for The Guardian, Saturday Paper, Overland, Australian Book Review, Liminal, Sydney Review of Books, Cordite, Kill Your Darlings, Westerly and elsewhere. His Meanjin essay “Justice for Elijah or a Spiritual Dialogue with Ziggy Ramo, Dancing” received the 2021 Peter Blazey Fellowship. He has been shortlisted for the Judith Wright Poetry Prize and lives on unceded Wurundjeri country with his partner and their cat, Turnip. @_declanfry More by Declan Fry › Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays First published in Overland Issue 228 24 November 202324 November 2023 · Friday Poetry Poem with vertical viewfinder Shari Kocher If in future an image of mine— of course, I have made the if-ness of your looking a multiple Ferris wheel turned to trolley car trundling down the street. Damn, I will show you something all right here, inside the daily or what you call private. First published in Overland Issue 228 10 November 202311 November 2023 · Subscriberthon 2023 On the final day of Subscriberthon, Overland’s most important members get to have their say Editorial Team BORIS A quick guide to another year of Overland, from your trusty feline, Boris. I liked the ginger cat story, though it made my human cry. I liked the talking cat, too, but I’m definitely in the “not wasting my time learning to talk” camp. But reading is good. And writing is fun, though it’s been challenging […]