Mountains 2013

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Then these mountains just started appearing…

It was the beginning of 2013, I’d been quite unwell and hadn’t made any work for at least a year- maybe longer, so the desire to make these mountains both overwhelmed and comforted me.

I was born in Beerwah, Glasshouse mountains QLD, and my Aunty lived right below Mount Coonowrin, (aka Crook Neck). As a kid it seemed as though my Aunty had this enormous mountain right in her backyard, it felt personal, the large crooked neck fella looking right over us, his face changing with the weather, the sun and the moon.  A timeless body watching our foolishness.

In times of chaos I still find the mountains very comforting. It’s something about scale and perspective. When I was a kid I’d mix up the scale and perspective, standing in my Aunties back yard covering the entire mountain with my hand.  The giant bowl of space between us seemed to disappear if I concentrated on the rock’s highest peak. I’d try to bring the mountain to me so I could forage through it’s tree covered ridges with my fingertips, discovering secret animal castles built where humans couldn’t see, or enchanted plants and tunnels to other worlds.

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shhh, pineapples squabble…

a praying woman’s arms
stretched into the sky
her feet pleading with the dirt to swallow her

a weeping mountain of a man,
concealing
bruised fruit flowers
within his morning glory

their dancing shoes,
shrunken
in the daylight,
in the light of things
pushed under the patio,
…uncertainly

a Queenslander,
long wooden legs covering
cool concrete,
pegs pinching towelling on twisted wire,
and glacial green eaves – lying!
Oh that heat! … move slowly,
the sun is everywhere

a highway,
molten bitumen ocean,
with morpheus steel waves,
lapping unknowns
against our driveway
messily

two gentles, too naive
love tried, love lost,
She walks to the highway and vanishes.
He digs a hole,
while mountains weep softly
and something grows quietly downstream…

 

 

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