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Calligram – Nerved Hakea
John Ryan (Edith Cowan University, Australia)

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i. static moment
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in a meadow amongst the gum-nuts
underfoot like marbles on a slick floor,
a campsite – cold water shower upslope,
the loo improvised from a trip to the tip.
faucet with drain all plugged up – a moat
of soapy scum water, a minor calamity of
saponin – rubbish bins tucked under wispy
eucalypts, the outlines of tents disappearing
into the tall grass. look for the level ground,
follow the drinking gourd to the promise
of deep slumber in the late winter pith of air,
condensing as soon as the sun drops below
dips below the heathland hill to the West.
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ii. electric moment
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awake now, a series of muffled explosions,
in that chiaroscuro between tender dreaming
and cynical reality, a flurry of sparks, as logs
newly thrown into a fire – a pyrotechnics –
New Year’s Eve style, startled like Dowager
Gong Sheng by her cheeky son in the 11th C
or, like me, by the tyrannical cannon my father
fired off on a July 4th New Jersey eve to blast
all that he could not blast the rest of the year.
lying supine there, vulnerable as a suckled
babe, ensconced under the hissing, flaring
arc, half-thinking the hubbub is of a noctural
marsupial snuffing around the tent, rooting
for ants or worms, sticking its snout rudely
into my centre belly chasm:
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…………. dew enters a ragged power cord
…………. patched with black tape.
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iii. calligrammatic moment
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Hakea neurophylla Meisner
……. veins branching nervously
………….. within smooth leaf margin
…………………. sun emboldening designs
……………………….. to red, what airy fire lines!
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djanda
……. blowzy stamens riding high
………….. like seahorses in a wild sea;
…………………. downturned pout of a nut
……………………….. dots of pink in olive green
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nerved hakea
……. spindly tassles
………….. undeterred by wind.
…………………. a giant amongst drosera
……………………….. spinning sticky earthbound flowers
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what secrets whispered?
……. sprouty images
………….. of gums on the ridges.
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iv. ec-static moment
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rain pummelling wool, that musk
of wet sheep, long strides over the bare hills.
sometimes it’s just what you’re drawn to –
lightning shards in the paddocks or
bodies ennervated by a
sinewous jolt.

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John C. Ryan is a second-year Ph.D. candidate at Edith Cowan University. His dissertation invokes the writer-as-botanist tradition of John Clare, Henry David Thoreau, and Pablo Neruda to create poetic interpretations of the unusual endemic flora of Southwest Australia. A graduate of the University of Lancaster’s M.A. in Environmental Philosophy, he’s especially interested in the relationship between wild plants and humans.

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