fell from sky
 mimed milk-orange silk
 caught fast behind silver surface
      underbelly a soft feather boat
 landed with crept-up leak
 sloe eye slunk in a deep
      like marching candlestick

     ripple-wake sprung certainty
 tiny gum nut pinged a bull’s eye’s circling
      ever widening rings
 the bridge lights arched a brighter orange
      than a carp’s gulp
 unfolding cut-out paper stretched out bunting
      that dawn pulls down

 and so it goes   you see a profile
      silhouette afloat liquid pearl
 art nouveau frieze so sharp black and still
      you can’t be sure if it’s weeping
 leaves’ cameo too crisp
      to be a bright fire’s morning embers
 grown lizard-skinned
      to velvet-grey in dust

 all you know
      is that upright   sturdy-trunked
 a shadow
      however rorschach blot
 however real it has you blinking twice
      is not
 but fugue
 overlaying orange-silk cloud
      neck   to bob empty brown bottle
 cormorant bellowing from mute depth
      risen glistening snake

 and an indistinct path we stride
      head down   gathering wilding dusk
 strewn with buff-sickle moon scything boomerang
      with sand glistering diamond
 miniscule day-after crumb scattered
      shining harder in our hand
 as red stars before they combust

 while raging stars drown out sundown racket
      deafening our voice
 and a higher canopy arcing siren
      invisible to our dulled eyes
 hones feathered bones’ squawking and shrieking
      inhabits hollows dark keening ache
 meshes lost nights   days breaking
      one   unto the other

This poem was runner-up in the 2010 Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize for New and Emerging Poets, sponsored by the Malcolm Robertson Foundation.