On Hammock Hill

This is my devotion, then: to walk sometimes

                                            with the dog through the sclerophyll

Cathedral of the morning. To let myself

Off my lead and follow a half-made track,

                                                       thinking a dilapidated liturgy,

Through bracken fern and native raspberry, three kinds

Of gum and a hundred kinds of weed,

                                                       toward nowhere in particular.

For the dog, the trail is a cartography

                                            of smells, its landmarks

Excrement and rabbit holes and old impressions

Left in mud. For me, it’s a way

                               I can’t find, most times, to lose

My way among brown butterflies; to fall out of the frantic schedules of the shallow

Hours that count down most of one’s time on earth. The forest path

                                                          is a labyrinth of bells and several local species

Of solitude. I go out daily, hoping for the rest of me,

                                              the otherness in all of us; I come back with dew

Drenched boots. And a weary dog. Inside my life – is it like this for you? –

I’m the blowfly that got inside the house: open two windows

And watch it beat itself up

                                            against every way it can’t get out, until

It can’t remember why it wanted to. This is my devotion, then: to walk

                                                           with the dog among frogsong and falling bark:

                                                                                          see if I can’t lose myself for the trees.