The Plenum Suite
— The One Mind Project, working notes
Sonnet I
The Flotilla at the Ramp
Swallowed in gulps that ask no grace or sign.
Upon the flat the heavy birds move on,
Each trailing outward in its wake a line
That widens, fades, and leaves the glass intact.
No sacred hunger guides the heavy beak,
No allegory burdens down the fact:
The belly full, the water cold and sleek.
They steer for neither heaven nor the fall,
Nor care what names the fisherman applied;
The salt and dusk are adequate to all,
And carry out the commerce of the tide.
The ramp dries off; the trailing ripples cease:
The river keeps its appetite and peace.
Sonnet II
The Soldier Crabs at Tomaga
Each shell an orb of hard, enamel blue;
By neither drum nor captain’s order bound,
They drift like gravel of a lilac hue.
No warlike conquest do the ranks pursue,
But sift the silt exposed along the tide,
To roll the mud and take the moisture through,
And leave their pellets scattered far and wide.
Yet at a shadow on the muddy side,
The whole battalion corkscrews in the grain,
Down through the liquefying sand to hide,
And leave an empty, unrecorded plain.
The water enters from the outer deep;
The silent mud is all they have to keep.
Sonnet III
The Mob on the Road to Guerrilla Bay
Propped on the heavy tripod of the tail;
The gravel crunches, yet they do not veer,
Nor turn in sudden panic down the trail.
With radar ears that pivot to the sound,
They watch the solitary rider pass,
Erect and still upon the littered ground,
Like weathered timber planted in the grass.
No woodland myth, no pastoral design
Enrolls their patience in a human scheme;
They graze the margin of the coastal line
Beyond the reach of allegory’s dream.
The chain spins on, the gravel hums away;
They keep the quiet timber of the bay.
Sonnet IV
The Echidna on the Dirt Road
It shuffles outward from the coastal scrub;
No heraldry upon its bristling back,
Intent on neither argument nor grub.
With downward snout and backward-pointing spade,
It tests the gravel with a prehistoric tread,
Ignoring every wheel and bicycle made,
By ancient, slow metabolisms led.
It turns no eye to flatter or implore,
Nor heeds the shadow of the passing frame;
An older architecture than the shore,
Before the tongue invented praise or name.
The dust drifts settle on the quiet clay;
It digs its furrow and goes on its way.
Sonnet V
Looking Across to Mossy Point
Where folded strata tilt along the shore;
By ancient fire and slow compression bound,
The tilted bedrock keeps the channel floor.
Across the reach, the casuarinas stand
In close battalions against the blue,
Their needles sifting wind above the sand,
Untroubled by the names the passage knew.
Between two shores the tidal waters run,
Clear over submerged reefs of iron stone;
A single morning, naked to the sun,
Sufficing in its element alone.
No ferry crosses, and no voyage starts:
The water enters, widens, and departs.
The answer: abundance without narrative. The pelicans drift on the water, their appetite and peace adequate to the salt and dusk. The soldier crabs march across the mud and burrow into the sand, leaving an unrecorded plain. The kangaroos hold the quiet timber of the bay, beyond the reach of allegory’s dream. The echidna carries an older architecture than the shore, its lineage predating the tongue that invented praise or name. The morning across to Mossy Point suffices in its element alone — no ferry crosses, no voyage starts, the water enters, widens, and departs.
The Progression. Water → mud → forest → earth → mineral. Surface → vanishing → inhabited → ancient → geological. Each sonnet goes deeper in time, further from the human. The fifth arrives at the mineral — the same mineral the Wagonga chert is made of, the same mineral the rhizolith is cast from. The plenum’s deepest register is lithic.
The Conscience Clause. No consciousness, no sensation, no morality, no teleology, no inherited metaphysics. The animals do not fear, do not hope, do not allegorize. The strata do not intend, do not teach, do not console. The shore is full. The shore does not care that it is full.