Wayfaring in the Incarnate Now
Tomakin Cave, Saturday
The cliff is a wall of split cedar and rusted iron,
The orange stains run down in vertical streaks where the winter rains
have leaked through the roof of the world,
Dripping into the back of the throat where the rock is black-damp and smells of wet stone.
It’s not ribs; it’s just stone,
Shattered into sharp, rectangular blocks at the base,
Orange, ochre, the color of a bruised peach where the fresh break shows.
The floor is a clutter of grey river-stones and bleached shells,
Crunching under a foot that isn’t thinking about anything but the balance,
And the light—the light comes in like a wedge of blue glass,
Hitting the standing water in the rock-pools,
Turning the surface into a hard, silver skin that the wind ripples.
Out there, the rocks are jagged, like broken teeth,
Brown and slick with weed that looks like wet hair when the tide pulls back,
And the water doesn’t “seethe”—it just hits the shelf,
White, then clear, then green,
Splashing against the dark lump of the island that sits low on the water,
Just a humped shape under a sky that is too bright to look at for long.
The waves don’t mean anything.
They just come in,
One after the other,
Making a sound like heavy breath in the mouth of the hollow.
The Morning Ride: South Coast Track
The bike is a rhythmic machine of gears and grease,
But the rhythm isn’t a meter—it’s the “still, white seething” of the pedals,
Pushing against the incline where the dirt is grey-dust and gravel-grit,
The tyres crunching over the dried bark of the Spotted Gums,
Those tall, skin-peeling masts that are inhaling the mist
and exhaling the scent of damp earth and eucalyptus.
There is no “I” on the track, only the “pulsating, carnal self” of the effort,
The breath coming hard and fast, like the heavy waves in the Tomakin hollow,
The heart beating against the ribs—no, not ribs, just the “living plasm” of the chest.
I see the Banksia cones, charred and black from the old fires,
Looking like “incipient putrescence” that has turned to iron-wood,
Their woody mouths open, catching the light that filters through the canopy in vertical wedges.
The track doesn’t reach an end; it just “sweeps past for ever, like a wind”.
A Blue-tongue lizard stays dead-still in the middle of the path,
Looking at me vaguely, its scales like a “running flame” of silver and brown,
I swerve—the balance shifting, the foot not thinking, just doing—
And for a second, the “filter thins” enough to see the world
not as a map to be followed, but as a “never-pausing life itself”.
No “Return” links here, no “Archive” of the ride—
Only the “wind-like transit” of the downhill stretch,
The “glow of the liquid moving truth” in the sting of the cold air on the face,
We are falling through the morning,
And we are alive.
Saturday Morning: The Moruya Plasm
The air is a thick, sweet incandescence of hot fat and granulated sugar,
The donuts are bubbling up from the oil—not crystalline gems but running flames of dough,
Handed over in white paper bags that turn clear with the heat,
Granules of sugar gritting under the thumb, a momentaneous association of taste and touch.
I pass the stalls where the Mighty Line is a row of hanging aprons,
Printed with kangaroos and maps of an Australia that renders on demand,
The shadows of the leaves are moving mutations on the dirt path,
A wind-like transit of tourists in linen and locals in work-boots,
None of them locally real until the system needs to resolve the transaction.
Down by the river, the water is a still, white seething against the pylons,
And there—the fur-seal, a humped shape of incarnate Now,
Dragging its weight out of the cold, liquid moving truth of the Deua,
Its fur is matted and dark, smelling of the never-pausing life of the deep,
A pulsating, carnal self preparing to turn into a stone under the sun.
There is no Protocol for the seal, no Master Style Guide for the way it drips,
It just exhales the cold river-past and inhales the warm rock-future,
While behind me, the market continues its incalculable journey,
Without beginning and without end,
Just the quick of the morning,
And the smell of the sugar.
The Tomakin Garden: A Small Holiday
The gate clicks shut—a final metal syllable before the silence of the mulch,
I am walking into the shade of the old banksias, those grey, serrated veterans of the coast,
Whose leaves are stiff as iron-filings and whose cones are heavy with the secrets of the bush.
There is no local reality here but the shadow of the bird-bath on the grass,
And the way the light filters through the canopy in vertical wedges of pale gold.
The air is different here, exhaling the scent of dry nectar and cooling stone,
Inhaling the salt-mist that still clings to my skin from the morning ride.
I see the new growth, the velvety candles of the banksia-fire,
Red and orange, a running flame emerging from the center of the grey.
It is the living plasm of the garden, vibrating unspeakably in the heat,
A momentaneous association of the earth and the sun.
I sit on the driftwood bench—the Foundation of the design palette—
And let the Mighty Line of my own spine relax into the grain of the wood.
The Toy Multitudes of the market are gone, replaced by the toy multitudes of the ants,
Following the incalculable journey across the toes of my boots.
The filter is thin here, in the quiet of the afternoon sun,
Where the never-pausing life of the garden just goes on,
Without a protocol, without a close
The shadows grow long, reaching like fingers toward the house,
The day is melting into the liquid moving truth of the evening
And I am just a rendered entity among the trees,
Falling into the peace of the small holiday.
Alive.
The “crystalline gems” of the project are nowhere to be found.
There is only the “seethe of the mud” in the flower-beds
and the “wind-like transit” of a honeyeater through the branches.