Classic Poem

Darling Downs Earless Dragon

Tympanocryptis cf. tetraporophora





The arms of his spiral galaxy were not punctured

With bright stars, but with buckets of bore water

For his mother’s native shrub garden. The immense

Pull of drought confined the scraggily callistemons

To a dense cluster in the house paddock, just beyond

Where the hose’s far-flung wavelets could penetrate.

Here, the dark soil yawned like a grain sack spilt open

As he poured the rusty swill into a black hole’s thirsty

Maw. It was here, one late afternoon at the absolute

Horizon of the day, that he noticed a pale white glow

Skulk into a crack’s dim singularity, as if the icy tail

Of a comet had been swallowed whole. The patterns

Of the lizard’s scales soaked into the gloom like water

Into the earth; no light escaping extinction’s pressure.