Your peripheries don’t rest easily, expanding

to embrace the imposing strips of fallen bark

that gather all the russet pigments of carmine

and leaf mould with the mealy beige of new
skins, uneven pieces from an impossible jigsaw

circling the paled trunk. The stripped husks

round their winglike corners, your edge-skin

forming part of the peeled rind, till mosquitoes
find the warm-blooded animal that sits too still.

The night-thrum of the bush is quiet, a tremble

that tinkers with the background humming

of the mind, that intensifies closer to the creek
in a skirling crescendo, smudging the margins further.

You’d help unravel the softened rinds: from under

one piece scuttles the light solidity of the huntsman

spider, the shining length of a dark worm with
its singular white stripe. The bark-pieces resist

preservation, the collection of stylish scribblings:

they dry too soon and curl protectively into coils

that crack when unfurled, that collude in your edging.