Mark Edgecombe: To the Glory of God

To the Glory of God

We have what’s called a whakatauki here:

When a big tree falls, another will rise.

Here’s to you, Les, unstraddleable

trunk, Bunyah’s blokey windfall— 

thankit be God!—across our path.

Not to be got round, your girth

demands surmounting, as trampers

seeking some humble objective slow,

down pack, plot route and struggle

over, pausing mid-traverse to gaze up

at the mighty O through which the glory

of God winks, blue laddering

in a heaven of green. We’ve another

saying too: Inside each trunk’s

a carving in wait for its master. Here’s

to your rehoisting, new-hewn totem

for Warrang’s scarred skyscape,

viewable from inside Ayers Rock,

from Nullarbor’s Sinai, even from here,

steepling next to “Freud’s cobwebbed

poem”, plinthless and bare, uttering,

in high vernacular, words akin to “Look

upon my works, ye mighty. And repair!”—

like an ordinary rainbow at evening,

a highrise forest’s bardic…