“At the first chance you know it will shrug/ you off, as lightly as a leaf”

After Anne M. Carson¹

Just off the freeway, near Peat Island

I.

“Hawkesbury River Bridge”
the first words I remember speaking—
popping up, unbelted, behind a Holden bench seat; one-ish?

Today, fifty-one,
boulder-perched by that river,
I realise three things.

One: Mother Earth wants to kill me.
Two: Rightly so.
Three: She’ll succeed.

II.

Post-industrially, I cut a toe
on plundered Saccostrea glomerata shells—
bacteria storms my blood;
no pharmacy now.

A wildfire starts by lightning, feeds on
lack of care
for Country; outstrips me—running senselessly uphill,
high on volatile oil.

Gaia’s handmaiden Anopheles—
mere gossamer flicker—
injects a lethal cocktail
from Ross River, Cape Town, some colony.

A grand tsunami
rushes up this sandstone valley—
dumps my body bag of broken bone
on a Peat Island roof.

Mother sends a little fish
for me to catch and eat—
poisoned inside
from my crimes.

1. The title of this poem is from Anne M. Carson’s poem “I take up a long, lone branch, bone white” (lines 23–24).
   Photo by Catherin J Pascal Dunk 2026. ↩︎