All around our steel home’s broad bull-nosed veranda

we’d jack-hammered rock, dug garden beds and ponds,

fenced an oasis as we planned for shade, blossoms, wildlife and fruit.

Amongst the natives we’d cultivated
paw paws, frangipanis, mangoes, bananas … Security

lights drew tree frogs and geckos; a Greek chorus

of bellowed crawks and clicking chick chacks;

an agile profusion alternating with contentment and strife.
But that season, in the Build-up to the Wet,

it was the raucous rocket frogs’ ratchet-like croakings

we noticed most. Each night the males made our ponds

throb with their rapid yapping calls, withdrawing at sunrise
when grass finches postured on the lips of ponds,

flicking their tails and singing a series

of squeezed rasping notes; white-gaped honeyeaters

threaded a path through foliage and blossom
as Papuan cuckoo-shrikes tore paw paws and mangoes.

Then one night at the Build-up’s end, as we drank

chardonnay on ice, Yanyuwa youths ran amok

on ganja, throwing stones and chiacking at our padlocked gates.
It only ended when [sorry name] leapt on our fence,

screaming at stars, before lightly climbing

a power pole like a cabbage tree palm –

an unabashed athleticism electrified
                                                in the fall.