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Poetry by Owen Sinclair
Wandering from one place to another,
A cloudless Meanjin sky one summer,
I passed the print of a eucalypt leaf:
Veins, margins, stem typed on Camp Hill concrete.
And though I was only just passing by
I retraced my last step and wondered why
The owner of this print had decided
To shed its stamp so the two collided
I imagined that it was some gesture
Proclaimed: “In this everlasting picture
Behold bona-fide immortality –
All that of humans is just parody.”
Soon the Arbor Force, all in a lather
That one of their own should seek such glamour
(One observer, who shall be named Henry,
Believes this due quite simply to envy),
For this transgression of tree modesty
Called the Arbor Council to assembly,
Who ruled that no tree shall hold communion
With idle fame nor concrete solution.
Signed this day in the year of our Lord
Twenty-twenty-four. Assent from the Board
Unanimously granted: from henceforth
Offenders to be clipped before the court.
I should like to think it isn’t so wrong
To hope for a legacy when I’m gone:
To show where I’d been and what I’d become;
The paths I walked ‘till my walking was done.
So perhaps I will take the example
Of a eucalypt tree down in Camp Hill.
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