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    The Future Keepers
    The Future Keepers
    The Future Keepers
    Ebook110 pages43 minutes

    The Future Keepers

    By Nandi Chinna

    ()

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    About this ebook

    The poems in The Future Keepers honour ecosystems and thecustodians of future ecologies. They navigate the poet's ownembodied experiences of change and succession of family,community and place. From the research scientists, gardeners, birdsand plants of Kings Park, to the activism and ecosystems of the BeeliarWetlands, to the poet's own inherited landscapes, these poems evokemutuality and exchange in speaking of the gifts we receive from beingopen to encounters with other species, and the reciprocity that thesegifts imply.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIndependent Publishers Group
    Release dateJun 1, 2019
    ISBN9781925591859
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      Book preview

      The Future Keepers - Nandi Chinna

      Acknowledgements

      TERROIR

      TERROIR

      As long as it takes to make the world,

      the ferrous country rises and wears away;

      black cockatoos alight in paperbark canopies,

      the earth keeps spinning inside the window of the glass.

      Not wanting to drink alone

      I raise a charge to my shadow,

      but she is already giddy

      with the scent of blue scaevola and red-eyed wattle.

      Along the flower ridge to the salt life

      windblown honey myrtle binds the cliffs,

      humpback whales ride the Leeuwin Current south;

      a wave rises and breaks in my mouth.

      Down through the peppermint forest

      and the body’s long hours,

      bees hum between marri and grape;

      sap is rising in the arteries of the vine.

      The afternoon is measured out in rows.

      I pass through gated paddocks;

      cows graze the pasture grass,

      the loam of their making shining from their faces.

      The creek rounds the cusp of the hill.

      Purling under the thick beams of the bridge,

      Wilyabrup Brook tastes like rain; and the earth

      keeps spinning inside the window of the glass.

      My shadow will not join me;

      she ripples away, dissolving into leaves and stones.

      The bottle is empty, but the flowers

      keep blooming on my tongue.

      COCKBURN SOUND

      This morning I have spent hours

      picking up sea hares from the beach

      and tossing them carefully back into the sea.

      A marine biologist would say

      that I’m wasting my time,

      that sea hares beach themselves

      this time of year. After mating

      and setting their eggs adrift

      in spirals of glistening ribbon,

      they give themselves up to the damage of surf,

      denting against the shore

      like giant, homeless snails.

      But this time last week it was the stars,

      1, 2, 6, then dozens of stars,

      whole constellations fallen from orbit,

      broken out of space, slipping in and out

      with the tide, tripping over each other

      in their impatience to curl up

      and die on the beach.

      Then the useless task of gathering them up

      against their inclinations,

      spinning them back into the water.

      Out in the Sound a dredge ploughs the seabed

      relentlessly back and forth.

      I stare out, a purple sea hare limp in my hands,

      wondering how much more the sea can spit out,

      how much more it can take.

      LEAVING ROTTNEST

      After boarding the ferry I close my eyes,

      feel the swell surging in sympathy

      with the blood pumping through my heart muscle;

      hold the island in those chambers,

      hold the sea wind on the south-west bluff,

      the osprey circling, diving, returning

      with a pearly slash of salmon.

      On the ferry’s TV the West Coast Eagles are slaughtering

      the Greater Western Sydney Giants,

      and I’m repeating names like mantras:

      Scaevola crassifolia, Westringia, Spinifex, Lepidosperma gladiatum,

      seaberry, saltbush, samphires, sedges, Rottnest Island pines;

      picturing the welcome swallows

      careening above coastal rosemary,

      ancient coral reefs split open on the shore,

      and the eye’s wide gaze across to the blur

      of harbour and commerce that is Fremantle.

      As the ferry speeds towards the mainland

      the island grows huge inside me;

      as seen from above;

      a leafy sea dragon

      adrift in the Indian Ocean.

      ASTRONOMY

      My niece has never slept outside before

      so we drag our swags onto the back lawn,

      but sleep is impossible with the soughing

      and creaking of the shadowy pine forest,

      the stars illuminating our faces.

      She’s imagining wolves, and monsters

      stalking the periphery of our camp,

      but it’s the animals of the galaxy

      who pace and

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