Poems: Bunya & Monkey Puzzle
In this week’s Poet’s Corner, Rob Walker of Adelaide experiences two of Gondwana’s ancient conifers from two of its ancient parts: Australia and South America.
The Monkey Puzzle Tree. Photo: Norbet Naget / Wikipedia Commons
I. Bunya
Araucaria bidwillii
When your nuts came down original Aussies had a real wingding. A feast-led roadmap to peace. Fruit bigger than a human head, signs in public parks warn the unwary. Eons earlier flourishing in your Mesozoic prime dinosaurs munched on your prickly parabola of lime-green leather. Inside the withered paraboloid a spiralled wooden ladder, rungs for even the clumsiest child to reach for the stars.
II. Monkey Puzzle
Araucaria araucana
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The Galapagos tortoise leg trunk filled an entire front yard a Thebarton worker’s cottage lived in perpetual umbrage the foliage was artificial xmas tree eleven-months-compressed in storage in tertiary days a little girl ran across the road just after the bend and my Vespa brushed so close a school-case knocked from her hand the puzzle: why was I spared killing an innocent girl by microseconds or the thickness of a leaf sharp as a shark’s tooth spared from opening a can of spiky worms?
Rob Walker completed a poetry residency at the Adelaide City Library in November. He has taught performing arts at primary school level in Adelaide, and English at high school and adult levels in Japan. He has appeared widely in both print and online poetry outlets in the UK, US and Australia, and is the joint winner of the 2007 and 2009 Newcastle Poetry Prizes, and this year’s Friendly Street Satura Prize. He has published four collections of his poetry, the latest being Tropeland, from which today’s poems come.
Readers’ original and unpublished poems of up to 40 lines can be emailed, with postal address, to [email protected]. A poetry book will be awarded to each contributor.