Published in Overland Issue 217 Summer 2014 · Uncategorized Éventualité Dusk Dundler it took you ten years to climb mt sorrow took captain cook a little while to pass by but he was in a bad mood – you return for a better one with gwendolyn, merlyn’s wife. she is running thru the forest sliding under fan palms as leeches grow between her toes. to reach the top of sorrow why so long she asks? some impression of the need to face escape. frenetic bravery of breath held fast. could you bury yrself in the sand waiting for a change of mind? tide chance to outrun escape itself there is a viewing platform white open cage gwen’s delicate french head rests upon. like a waxen dove. sees cast silver reef light estuarine creek. you implore forgiveness … thick shrouded range heaving body down to southern swell. as mist splays in windscreen waves. she thinks the mountain is crying. thinks you think that silly. do not instead feel her pinpoint stance propelling world motion. like when you become the universe (later gwen says this later). we get it by the way reception zaps down when left for here from radiohead night still high on morph flight. now bound magnetic. tribulation dissolving like plaster ship. michael is partial deaf adventurer with arrived smile of evangelical gratitude. his arms flail digital translucence screen tips gesturing his phone to show it works. here and nowhere else ten years from sorrow’s first summoning. vision buried deep. wrangling tropics of relations paradise. veiled pressings of earthly delights. numb contemplation, tangible standards scraping by, nimble witness turns, the portents undoing. that fleeting dance of self importance heart swept impotence leading descent. could have been then or now Sisyphus. doesn’t matter. obtaining desire cancels objective. start again not even know what you are carrying. you hand certain filaments to her. a brocade of dry seed pods froth causality. ask her to throw them back to forest not to you. everything affects – another partner of matter, or not, parameters get lost here. base of spine electric bronze sheaf leaves collected from fallen epiphyte indentations like a belt of bullets. to take with you ammo spores into the new zone the queen of yr inner world she will sail Dusk Dundler Dusk Dundler studied under Martin Harrison at UTS. He has published in the Prague Revue and Griffith REVIEW, produced for Radio National and reported for the Koori Mail. He was shortlisted for the 2012 Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize. More by Dusk Dundler › 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 22 November 202422 November 2024 · Fiction A map of underneath Madeleine Rebbechi They had been tangled together like kelp from the age of fourteen: sunburned, electric Meg and her sidekick Ruth the dreamer, up to all manner of sinister things. So said their parents; so their teachers reported when the two girls were found down at the estuary during a school excursion, whispering to something scaly wriggling in the reeds. 21 November 202421 November 2024 · Fiction Whack-a-mole Sheila Ngọc Phạm We sit in silence a few more moments as there is no need to talk further; it is the right place to end. There is more I want to know but we had revisited enough of the horror for one day. As I stood up to thank Bác Dzũng for sharing his story, I wished I could tell him how I finally understood that Father’s prophecy would never be fulfilled.