Landscape photographs from Black Saturday by John Gollings
Fremantle Arts Centre, July 2015.

enter a room and find stripes of night on each of the walls

pines have been hushed

black trunks block the light sky
and underfoot the ash is soft, waiting for wind

              there can be no name for this

letters and numbers in degrees
of requiem     so many points
of a pin     where the fire spirit chose to go

a doorway into another room where undressed,
old hills roll in wrinkles
trees like stubble
on anatomy we don’t normally see
roads like a lover’s tracings
on flanks, shoulders

camera is a word for room in another language
– this is a tender lens

how do we forget
the defence of bark
how a hill names a track
the requirement of sun for shadow

photographs on a wall

                paper
                                scissors
                                                rock

Josephine Clarke

A version of 'Aftermath' was published in Westerly’s online edition: New Creative, September 2016.