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 25 May 2026 · The university Behind Craven’s audit Jeff Sparrow In November 2025, when antisemitism envoy Jillian Segal announced that Emeritus Professor Greg Craven would head what she called the “University Report Card Project”, the media referred to her plan as an “audit” of higher education’s response to antisemitism. It was never anything of the kind. 22 May 2026 · Friday Poetry Judas goats Caitlin Maling Because goats can climb / and cave, clamber to find cover / in the bushes of what they can’t eat / which isn’t much.