by Alison Eastley
After the summer of pollination, the noise of dying insects
is nothing but a thin tremor for a clique of circling wings,
this strange ceremony of long-eared bats hanging up
side down in the backblocks behind thin skinned paperbarks,
I remember saying melaleuca, melaleuca as if milk,
honey and wine could incite dangerous sensations
away from my hymn to egg-shaped leaves, how I stripped
the paperbarks until my fingers bled and once,
we carried torches and a glass of red under a galaxy
of stone pocked silence too heavy to survive
another hibernation. It’s too cold to decipher far
fetched forgetfulness, to reach your overstretched truth.
It was the nightmare of your lies paralysing
the earthbound flight of my desire that kept me wishing
I could be more like a long-eared bat, how they save
their breath every winter and lose all interest in sex.
Alison Eastley lives in a small coastal town in Tasmania, Australia. She is a tutor by day and a writer by night. Previous work has been published in Neologism and Stirring.