Dance with me here, in the forests of Lutruwita,
Funnel webs tangled in hair, sprawling fungi beneath feet and all.
How long has she worked to spin this iridescent silk?
Cushioned Dicranolomo supporting the head how polyester cannot.
In moments, the roughness of paperbark trunks an extension of skin.
See the way your veins are mirrored on the underside of the maple leaf.
We could have built a sister forest from discarded leaves of crimson and ochre,
Although it would’ve held nothing on the Tarkine.
Dance with me here, under the silk surface of Lake St Clair,
Even if you have always been frightened of water snakes.
The wind whispers; l e e a w u l e e n a
Allow breath its finiteness, osmosify myriophyllum instead.
Take life from life and return it.
Symbiosis.
Dance with me here, tumbling in cyclical ripples under the weight of the Tasman Sea.
Molluscs frozen to stone, mushrooming mould.
Neptune’s tentacled necklace, the invasion of life form with life form.
Dunes in the seabed’s sand.
Who are you kidding that you are not as raw, as microbial, as much a nucleus of this earth as the soil, the rivulet, the buttongrass, the cliffs?
