34-37 Degrees South: Easy reading version

This naked lake rests
Elanna Herbert
after the fires: she is shamed, her corset of trees flayed
denuded. this naked lake no longer settles: she is restless
despite the new rise orange blood moon
spring swallows seek familiar eaves, nest in lost houses
gaps staining their valley. do swallows imagine a concept
of apocalypse as they breathe continuum, fly confused by absence?
the cutaway for the new retaining wall holds no lies, a layer
of ash, carbon of recent burn, otherwise glutinous clay
layered by rich alluvial terrace—and us here living the
first hard burn—ten thousand years to mark this soil
has climate change brought you clarity yet?
before loss: 1962 drew a coastal village, lake views sliced blocks
from a stolen dairy paddock woven through a sideways riff
of Spotted Gum bush. now silent, regrowth thick, epicormic. this
once was, in the time of shellfish and fish traps. of ochre and song.
the time of story, if you have a mind to listen to the Yuin
in the flood no one believes a fury of fire, imagines the day
a nightmare, buries it quick in softer rain, South Coast returns
its autumn: in mist this naked lake wraps herself close
disappears beyond Killarney, with the distance of hill
becomes Scottish Loch, shifts her gaze, glances east where
Cunjurong Point belies Caledonian provenance, washing
the surf break—a left-hander, staying long off Green Island—
across the broken sandbar inside Conjola Island, lost in sand
beside Princess Island, Oyster Point remembers shellfish
popping on hot coals, the chatter of children up past
Picnic Bay to Conjola Creek. this lake twice drowned
by river valleys, folded by creek, still marked in change
calm bays lay down before fire, naked, stripped
by flame.
this lake.
33