Balancing Rock

Thrust up out of New England’s soil—

this granite boulders sits

among other granite boulders—

a “geological phenomenon”

according to guide books,

south of Glen Innes, off the highway.

Neither egg-shaped nor ball-shaped,

more like an inverted pear—

a spinning top that never spins

but balances on its edge, defying gravity

and centuries of cold weather

that have split it, chiselled it.

Winter rains pour on to it.

Moss dies, re-grows. Lichens decorate it

in birthmark patterns.

Crows sit hunch-backed on barbed-wire fences—

cawing dismally across stony paddocks—

peering into a brittle grey sky.

Visitors come and go

in all kinds of weather

with their questions and curiosity—

but it just sits like the weight at the end

of an invisible plumbline—

or like Buddha in a garden of stones

pointing to the here and now.

Peter Skrzynecki

Stroke

Sitting beside his son

he realised it was not enough

to stand on a bridge

and watch the river flow—

somehow, you had to stop the tide

to understand the river’s speech.

Watching the swallow

dive and rise, taking its sip

from the flowing water—

he knew you had to catch

the song in its throat

to understand the swallow’s memory.

The fish, hooked and pulled

from the river, struggles

to dive deeper and dies in the light:

like a human eye—knocked

out of focus—searches

to escape a tiny clot of blood in the brain.

Nurses rush about in Emergency,

doctors, paramedics

in yellow fluoro vests—as if the city’s

going mad on a Saturday night.

Patients wait on trolleys

until a bed becomes vacant.

It makes sense and it doesn’t—

trying to understand illness

and turning it into art:

painting, music, the poetry of night

distilled into a single image

of his son lying in the semi-dark.

Water, fish, a swallow’s flight,

the gift of putting words together—

he would give it away

just to see his son getting better.

Helpless, unable to put thoughts into words,

he wipes sweat from his son’s brow.

Peter Skrzynecki

Zebra Finch

Flying from Sydney to Cobar

en route to Bourke

I stood beside the airport building

and took in the scenery—

morning sun, red earth

turning green with new vegetation,

a lone metro-liner jet

on the tarmac

looking stranded, out of place.

A female zebra finch

flew out of a nearby paperbark

and perched on a barbed-wire fence

singing its sweet, plaintive song

despite my quick intake breath

that didn’t frighten it away.

It sang. I listened

until the welcome was over.

Emus, kangaroos, wild goats—

my journey continued

for another 165km by road

until I knew I’d entered

the land of explorers and poets—

Lawson, Ogilvie, Breaker Morant,

Professor Fred Hollows, the Kidman Way.

The mighty Darling River flowed nearby.

The boy born in Germany

in 1945, in the rule of Adolph Hitler

had come this far

as a man—but felt equally at home

whether teaching, sight-seeing,

having dinner

at the Port of Bourke pub—

or watching a storm bearing down

from southern Queensland

and feeling afraid.

Driving back to Cobar

next morning, we left in darkness

and I saw the countryside in reverse—

awed at how kangaroos stood proudly

in the tall grass

as if they owned the earth.

Harvesters were being hauled

on oversized trucks—preceded

by four-wheel drives

that flashed yellow warning lights.

My driver said goodbye

and we shook hands, promised

to stay in touch.

As I turned around

to enter the airport building

it was there again—

the zebra finch that flew

out of the white paperbark

and perched on the barbed-wire fence—

this time singing a song of goodbye.

Coincidence? Is that all it was?

Or had she always

been in my life, the totem of a spirit

past, present and future

in the land of red earth and mulga scrub—

where I stood and listened

and felt even more at home?

Peter Skrzynecki