In the Garden I cross the threshold of glasshouses

seeking succor with bromeliads

whose leaves are banded

with scales, like blotting paper, to inhale

this morning’s fog:

outside I meander amongst upright

natives: one is shaped

like a pine but with large

glossy leaves and globular masses,

like pom-poms, of yellow and white flowers

brewed long ago, I am told on a sign, against

colds, vomiting and diarrhea; another stately elder

has large prop roots once weaved

into nets and dilly-bags, the strips

of bark chewed

into slings and tourniquets; while another

upholds a central cabbage, eaten raw

or lightly cooked, with the fronds

and flower bracts recycled

constructed containers:
in a cycad grove

I bare witness to ancient symbiosis –

coralloid root structures hosting

blue-green algae for nitrogen – and I read

how highly toxic seeds were once

de-husked and chipped into bite-size pieces

in a pounded baptism administering

coarse smelly flour:
before these gardens grew

asbestos was composted

in a cyclone’s ruins

and I mull over a buried fibre’s bloom:
the gardens and gallery are linked

by a Larrakia Dreamtime Walk

where dot-painted signs award

canoe trees, delicacies and the raw

stuffs for baskets and mats; and amidst signage

warning against camping and public drinking

our countrymen gather

a mountain of casks, prizefighting

and swilling their losses:
in the gallery I enter ‘After Afghanistan’,

another remote colonised community,

where trauma is scraped

and bandaged onto boards; where foot soldiers

are removed of their packaging

and left flailing, broken

and captured on a gallery’s walls; and with eyes

clenched against the blinding expectation imposed

from inside I wait for the seepage

of blood from thighs – a self-mutilation

like the latex collected and heated from milkwood.



Notes:

In response to a day at the George Brown Botanical Gardens, Darwin and Ben Quilty’s,

After Afghanistan, Museum & Art Gallery of the Northern Territory.