Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume Five November-December 2024
Triolet for Murdered Trees, poems by Jonathan Cant.
Triolet for Murdered Trees
All those dead Red Gums at Castle Cove
helps explain why we can’t have nice things.
There was once a thriving native grove
of Banksias—killed at Castle Cove
for harbour views and the greed that brings.
The homeless wildlife in Castle Cove!
And this is why we can’t have nice things.
Unearthing
i.
I wander through the coalfield’s lunar wasteland looking
for signs of life, any colour or movement among the tailings,
debris, and scattered scree. Something catches my eye halfway up
a steep heap of coal. Cyan-coloured flames conjure dancing witches
where a small fire has ignited. Drawn to it, I scale the mound,
but hear no holy sound nor booming voice; only the whoosh
and whisper of a south-westerly, winter’s wind bringing the hellish
smell of sulphur. I descend along a dirt track as it snakes its way
deeper into the valley. To my side, a shallow drainage ditch
is littered with broken bottles and cans of spray paint discarded
by tattooed teens who’ve left home to chrome solvents—huffing
inhalants to take the edge off Life. Suddenly, I hear a chuffing
nearby. There are no railway tracks in sight and yet—way out here—
is the puffing of a steam engine. It seems to issue from a fissure
in the shale embankment. A gaseous hiss with a rhythm that builds
in tempo, then subsides into silence. I put my ear to the hole
and listen as the thing pumps its way back into existence: an angry,
breathing beast. I recoil from the spitting cavern as if it were
the mouth of an idol carved from rock, now uttering a warning
I don’t wish to hear. The Old Ones have news and it isn’t good.
What should you expect from a place as forsaken as this?
ii.
Yet, even here, among the toxic vapours, pollution, and pillage,
there’s beauty to be found if you know where to look—
a natural museum underground. I pick up a large, flat piece
of shale and cleave it open with a rock hammer, splitting it
to reveal its history and mystery. A perfect fern! The smooth,
thin layer of carbon meets grittier shale. The fossil’s dark
silhouette contrasts with the lighter, surrounding stone; like
an ancient woodblock print or a scholar’s slate awaiting translation.
Geology’s lucky dip should be as much about art as it is money.
iii.
The shape and symmetry of each leaf mimics the larger branch
from which it has stemmed—a miniature forest within a forest.
Here’s the floral legacy of a life once lived. Now neutralised,
compressed by pressure and time, asleep in its sedimentary bed.
This plant’s stored energy becoming part of the carbon net-
work like oil and gas to be spent—burnt under a car bonnet.
© Jonathan Cant
Jonathan Cant is a Sydney-based writer, poet, and musician. He won the 2023 Banjo Paterson Writing Awards for Contemporary Poetry, was Longlisted for the 2023 Fish Poetry Prize, and the 2022 Flying Islands Poetry Manuscript Prize, Commended in the W. B. Yeats Poetry Prize, Highly Commended in the South Coast Writers Centre Poetry Awards, and twice selected for the Ros Spencer Anthology Brushstrokes. Jonathan’s poems have appeared in Cordite Poetry Review, Otoliths, and Booranga Writers’ Centre’s fourW thirty-four.
This is another of your very special sensitive poems. In parts sad and concerning but still a great poem.
Proud of your work always.
Mum