Dazzling

The Bushland is Otherwise Grey.

You enter the bushland where nothing
is green. Sandstone boulders, ancient
fey faces, loom over the track and you follow.
The gum trees are silver and grey, There's
a tear overhead and a patch peers through,
sky-blue.

The corpse of the car has crouched in the valley
for decades, its rusted flanks drunk
in the bed of the rippling creek.
Deadly iron, tetanus red, oxidised hulk
sunk in the scrub with a few native violets,
bruise-blue.

In the shade there's a mess
of blue clothes pegs, milk bottle lids,
blue drinking straws. The boudoir
of the bower bird, blue plastic, seductive,
with three sticky trails of plumbago,
native violets and a dead Nike shoe,
dark blue.