This old love

All things an old growth love will do
Give shelter from driving winds
Hail and smothering snow
Hide a sapling in the shade and force it up on show
Insubstantial frame
Prone to bend, bleed and burn
Undiscerning firestorm
One in one hundred flood
Innocent marsupials breeding
Forest elder tends young
The canopy maturing
Channeling the pure sweet rain
Into tendrils for feeding
Look up wonder and observe
Generations time laid bare
Tender skin of wood
Precious to the earth
And all our cares

Bane of indifference

Apathy betrays me on regular bases
So long steaming upriver
Now tidal flow pushes back
Downstream to ocean
Where were we going
Into heart of darkness?
Comrades join in singing
Whistling through evergreen
Sleepy villages lie
Smoking signals
Green leaf envy
Flying high the sos
Invisible by night
Jungle hearth glows bright
Still no competing
With our cumulative
Night lights
No spreading of anything
When living beyond
The fringe of existence
Life abounds on the edges
A catalyst for hiding minds
To grow and light fires
Just to stay alive
This is the way to meditate
With a flicker in the eye

Love like

A rainforest
Soaking in
Air thick moist
Beauty prickles
The skin
Abundant growth
Above and below
Every nook
Covered over
A place for every
Living thing
For every falling
Another grows
Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers National Park, lutruwita/ Tasmania