Jane Harrison

KAKADU

I
below skirts of dead leaves
pandanus fray
into “knock  im down season”

speargrass fires
burn across the plains
the first clouds of the wet yet to gather

a smashed guano
of insects smears the windscreen
of the red Suzuki cruiser

and birds of prey high in the sky
hover over the souls of bones
bleaching inside the Kakadu gates

II
the banana plantations
near Humpty Doo burn carefully
filling the sky with smoke

and when we stop to buy mangoes
sunlight has carved wombs into trees
the fruit ripening in late September

at Bark Hut
the emu’s copper-blue throat gleams
hard and scraggy as the soil

and like a forest of black cheroots
an acre of sooty-trunked woollybutts
stretches finitely away

III
Cathedrals of the North:
the termite mounds are silent at matins—
nothing here that Douglas Stewart

did not notice:
the caves of painted hands, those hands
in the black rock, like hands in a grave

here, my son photographs the billboards
—what are you doing? I ask
Not disturbing the wildlife he replies

Kakadu night:
a barn owl swoops our car, swoops again
catching moths in the headlights

Sing, are you happy? asks the pig-tailed waitress
collecting your empty cup back in the lukewarm light
of the inner west, your almost natural habitat, as
a girl with tax on her hand mooches past. Now
the coastal light is flamboyant, tossing its long blonde-

tipped mane; an attention-seeker sweeping away that
stale air of the recent past. The lustrous morning sun grabs
you again, pushing boldly into corners of illuminated dust.
Gravitating towards commerce outside, the glare cools in tone,
reflecting off the glass towers & concrete wind tunnels

that funnel batches of young men in suits with artfully tousled
hair & too much perfume, among them perhaps an aspiring
swedish model & former pizza-delivery boy; down to
the depths of the rank-smelling underground that neatly
removes your sense of direction, then the bleep of an sms

reminder: your tax return is due 31 Oct. On escaping the malls
there’s a half-pleasant smell shooting around: off-white
astringency, hay fever & a sweetness that’s just turning;
unnoticed, you imagine, by those in over-sized sunglasses
& slouch ankle boots, stepping over the junk of temporary lives

lining the streets: ditched appliances, clothing, a sagging couch.
The light polishes itself to a further sheen, hanging around
patiently in the art deco flats, a troupe of backpackers strumming
& stomping overhead. You’re not quite ready to turn over
the calendar page & here’s that exotic visitor, the sea breeze.