Flora violates nourishing soil,
thrusts in roots that blunder deeper,
shove away pith to make path
until a shudder and collapse
or one rogue root extruding
from its flesh a solo blossom
bucks the fragile plan.
Instruments of darkness
toil in thick dirt.
Predators of root and bedrock
burrow underfoot.
Traveller, beware:
the patch of earth your boot imprinted
hovers on pockets of nil.
Peter Norman is the author of two collections of poetry, At the Gates of the Theme Park (Mansfield Press, 2010) and Water Damage (Mansfield Press, 2013), with a third forthcoming in 2015 from Icehouse. His first novel, Emberton, was published this year by Douglas and McIntyre.
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