Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

'Treecreeper' by Sarah Holland-Batt | States of Poetry Queensland - Series One

by
States of Poetry Queensland - Series One

'Treecreeper' by Sarah Holland-Batt | States of Poetry Queensland - Series One

by
States of Poetry Queensland - Series One

Bebop sparkplug spurred in withershins,
loop-de-loop interloper, he hop-steps
ravines of bark, shirking faultlines,
going solo, headstrong, scion of impatience,
juddering like the stalled engine
of prop-plane on tundra runway, skirting
and skimming up, peeling out,
reeling in spiral, spy, scout, prematurely
thrusting into the unknown, Magellan
running aground on an idea of home,
small caravel listing on lateen sails
then surging helical in staccato, rounding
each horizon in horror of what lies behind,
long a believer of earth-as-cylinder,
denier of his long scroll of crimes,
smiter of pseudoscorpions and mites,
he scours the lonely atolls under cover of snow,
dreaming of Cape Verde and the Canary Islands,
forewarned of the way death arrives, ahead of his time,
the age of discovery sinking out of sight
in the forest's surge and slide.

Sarah Holland-Batt

From the New Issue

You May Also Like

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.