Famous Reporter # 39 - poetry, Dael Allison: 'fireflies summon'

DAEL ALLISON

fireflies summon

this is darkness

          the river swollen with doubt

          its sullen mutter

the sky is a haul of dead fish

spilt from a sprung trap

          pewter underbellies mirror

          moonless glints of chop

the river surface teems

with eviscerated roots

          broken leaf and shoot

          drowned logs – crocodile echoes

death shushes past

i shrink

from the river’s wet fingering

          my dry-leaf canoe a fragile

          tipping husk

balance is a febrile dream

fixed

          on the agitation of the motor

          the small propeller’s churn

nowhere

          the shifting point

          between certain and uncertain

between solid ground

and sucking abyss

          the interface a muddy bank

          of unassailable silt

there is no anchor point

          the night wind frays belief

          a heron flaps a black rag

but chance is a dance

of pinpoint light –

          fireflies summon certainty

          and weave a safety net

of wonder

Dale Allison is based near Taree NSW but works away, most recently in Darwin, and prior to that on humanitarian reconstruction in Indonesia. She won the 2007 Wildcare Tasmania International Nature Writing Prize and was co-judge this year. Her essays and poetry are published in Australian literary magazines.