Hull, Coral: Tropical garden in conversation

The tropical garden is in conversation.

I walked down my driveway and was dive-bombed

by a big caramel grasshopper the size of my forearm.

My hand reached down to grab the wrought iron gate.

 

There was a bearded dragon lying across it.

The bearded dragon lizard looked at me.

I looked at the bearded dragon. Excuse me,

 

I’d like to shut the gate now.

 

Tasks take longer to complete in the tropics.

[Apparently, more neighbours than down

south to contend with].

I was just about to slip on my shoe

when a speckled gecko chased a fly out of it.

 

Then a big six legged huntsman hopped like crazy

through the louvers in the loungeroom.

It almost fell in my soup!

 

Fucken Hell, Look Out!

I dropped the phone.

 

The huntsman was obviously in a hurry,

having lost one leg per day for the past two

days to the gecko community on the front verandah.

 

It must be hard being a spider with eight legs, let alone six.

 

The geckos were merciless hunters.

 

The rain is slashing through the leaves,

chopping them to shreds.

 

Those big leafy plants think that they can just

grow all over the place in the humid air and

sun and shade, proliferate like crazy,

held together by their shallow roots,

orchids, epiphytes vines fungi

and remain here.

 

The wet season has her thoughts on this.

So you think you can stay in Darwin and

get away with it?

 

The equator speaks its instability and awesome

energy from the waistline of the planet.

Then when that big monsoon storm comes

the trees get dressed up in their fragile gowns of leaves.

They toss their shoulders around, wave their

slender hands and dance like crazy all

over the goddam garden,

more wind than plant.

 

I say make up your mind you crazy forest.

Are you going or staying?

I’m afraid if they go then I might as well go too.

The table was blown away leaving a trembling

rodent beneath before the eyes of the cat.

 

That’s the most unstable sky

I’ve seen all season,

purple clouds

in misty ribbons

spinning like firecrackers.

 

When the first drop hit my arm

I brushed it away like an insect.

The sky is rushing along above the land and

when it stops big buckets of straight down rain.

Rain like wet hair furiously combed out and

the head of a thick old mop dipped

in dishwater just pounding the earth.

 

The temperature has dropped by half.

The ground sings, fuck you this is all for me.

 

The plants hold onto their roots, their leafy braids.

Dance like ferals at a groovy nightspot.

The green ants who bite potential intruders

all day arses up and vicious are very quiet

in their boxed leaves.

They could drown in a tenth of a droplet.

 

A black cockatoo talks to thunder.

 

When the thunder replied its shuts up its hard little beak.

 

It appears that rain like this is a very exciting thing.

A frog that seems to remain in exactly the same

position in my garden since I arrived here

four weeks ago, starts to scream out.

 

[Are you all right?] I ask.

 

Darwin is clinging to the coast

like a saturated fruitbat.

‘Yeah, I guess so.’

A town so friendly that it replies.

The big wind positions my voice

then slams it into the driveway once,

and finally throws it out to sea…

 

The mighty cyclones are conspiring there.