by Marianne Boruch
before terrible fires impressed
their little Pentecostal tongues of flame
all over the internet map like
a holy card hallucinates,
before both the brave and the timid wore
gasmasks to bed.
Friends, this was pre-fire, pre-knitting of mittens
for dazed burnt Koalas,
before poets began watering the bees,
before the floods finally came,
before present turned past to reconfigure a future.
Medieval enough, going dark, this nowhere-else
all of them: Platypus, Koala, Emu on the run,
Echidna spiked as grass that lies back
in wind or rain, steady multiple Kangaroos,
Wallabies upright or lying
sideways as if at a company picnic downing
martinis in the grassy expanse.
We hiked to see the rock paintings. We sat
for a while a few yards
from some Roos in the shadow of
their afternoon. An old female
pressed forward on those little arms to rise,
to try to rise.
We—full speed ho-hum to them, so nothing at all
in the next patch of gum trees.
Solidarity, sister! She
was me and we
were us–bad joints need oil, cross species—
as she hitched herself up.
Recollect is to rescue,
to invite back the plain astonishments.
That’s the dream, to get away, is it not? We’ll sit, we’ll
walk happily to find the rock wall they painted
a thousand years back, to go back…
Open your book, Pliny, still at it at it as if
that raised roar of earth at Pompeii never kept raging,
as if fires in Australia skipped the loved places.
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