BEYOND LORD HOWE

                       

                       We roved all tracks of calcarenite and kentia,

                        hiked blackbutt spurs to Malabar

                                                 down to Old Gulch boulder beach,

                        swung by buttresses on banyan ropes,

                        made gliddery the overhang of Goat House Cave, all

to get a bead, like ratters chasing penny a tail

                                    smoking out stumps

or the pied currawong’s vigilant eye

on the tallest pyramid stack, The Pyramid,

                                    to which we aspired.

                        Then cresting The Clear Place, you sense

beyond the glide and plunge

                                                            of black-masked boobies

and the raucous skitter of petrels at your feet,

half-glimpse its presence:  a guyot geist,

impassively watchful,

                        angle and imminence curiously thralled,

hazed in the violescence of angel fish

                                                            and drift of egret down        

                        that Faberge might have dreamed up in rock crystal;

                                    Winklestein’s Gormenghast;

 Tintagel suspended on a cushion of ether;

            molten Gothic by Gaudi;                                                            

a chain-mailed fist rising from a steely lake;

                                                the fixation of an Ahab . . .           

And as our plane soared past Ball’s Lidgbird,

we sought not to farewell Arcadia or lagoon,

but horizon’s smudge that stood as siren.

                                                                        Michael Small
                       Nov 21-Dec8, 2001