From Brisbane

Tanya's Penrose Quilt

Sunshine State

Brisbane is a very different city from Hobart.  I was surprised by its vast skies, far horizons and heat shimmering over a never-ending flatness, when I visited family there. Their Brisbane suburb sprouted  suddenly out of long stretches of bushland cut in half by a major highway.  My visit prompted this poem.



Sunshine State

Up here where the sun is always on and the sky is forever blue,
everything lingers.

Only the road brings noise and movement,
its man-made pulse beats counter-point to the brooding notes of emptiness,
just over the Great Divide.

Up here where the road fractures the bush, great gums still tower.
Their grey-green presence is everywhere,
crowding the edges of things with darkness.

Immutable, mysterious,
encroaching.