Wet Gully Elegy
Magdalena Ball
After Kimberly Brown, 'Making Our Own Way'
It's been ten years since you walked into the forest eyes smoking fingers against stone mushroom pink, bare feet leaving. Raw scent fills the room eucalypt, resin, lime words of paperbark red bloodwood sassafras beneath the canopy caress my skin the way you became what you fought for opening into a dark light wilder than the tendrils and fronds city fears buried into soil.
The science inspiring the piece:
There is a wet gully red gum forest just behind my house, and I walked into this space as I often do before I begin writing, breathed deeply, smelling the dank sweetness of the earth, and thought about how alive this space is, and how the subterranean (let’s call it death) and what is visible above (let’s call it life) are not separate things.
Listen to Magdalena read the poem:
Feature image via Tyrrell Photographic Collection, Powerhouse Museum (Public Domain)
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