Poem for the Day

South-West Woods
                                    Tea Tree Cottage, Dwellingup

i
This year, like an inkling for shade
we head to Dwellingup: its wrinkled forest of leaves,
tree walks, birds writing songs of reminisce.
You have memories of the south, the holiday un/packing,
radio songs and kids in the back seat; camping
on the Blackwood river, loaded up with a promised
movement of bathers, scoop nets, rubber dinghy.
To this day, you do not know how 'holiday' - ever,
became a change of pace, a dialectics
of investment, rural containment,
erratic dreamlife, upheaval.

ii
Now these ghosts are long gone and this cottage,
as gift, coaxes us to its tenure of rest,
its pink myrtle, lilac borders,
timber verandah with an open sky
slithering down its starlight.

iii
Relaxed & seeking the flurry of bird & bush,
we trek the green valley dizzy with splendour.
We catch the season, evergreen: kangaroo paw
spider orchids, morning iris. Butterflies
twisting fugues of light; the Murray river rising
each time to meet rope and swimmer. We take in
the beauty of grass and ridge, a little summer heat
- wanting to be singed by this aroma of wilderness;
as if in its namesake Tea Tree Cottage
will promise us composure,
an early morning rise of watercolours,
of summer, a forest rolling past.
Six days of cabin life - we deserve it!
No high-tech, technivision, telephone.
Only a quintessential archway of cool air
infiltrating.