ALT Poem You donder along, pointing out dippers  and the barn door open wings of herons.  You never see the entirety of me. Weirs fall over themselves to  feel the length of me over and over. The length of me,  insinuation, suggestion, so you might hunt for more than a fleeting touch. I have to turn, come  doubling back on myself until i’m an oxbow bend for you to recognise me, for you to see me as alive. Daniel Duggan

ALT Death of a Koala - after Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Armadillo” and Ivan Smith’s Death of a Wombat Hennaed ribbons lash treetops, shake loose starry-embers. The forest shimmers. Koala chews a fragrant leaf, nose crinkling. Popping gumtrees torch the ridge. Kangaroos vault through inferno, falling like red ghosts. Ground rises in marmalade-haze. Terror animates drugged limbs. Paw-pads burn on glowing bark. Koala cries, small bellows like a didgeridoo; voice, ancient as this land. Trees explode like Roman candles. She spots a burrow, refuge from eucalypts toppling like soldiers, black and hollowed out; the ghastly stillness of feathereds, climbers, creepers. Underground, a body huddles close. Wombat keeps vigil until muted mewls go silent. Koala sleeps, dreaming of gum leaves. – Gayle J. Greenlea

ALT A Long, Quick Death I die out of an expanse of Space. It is distant, it is cold. Beside the bright taper of a constellation there are no homes, workplaces, worship sites revealed like black waymarkers. out of the weight of comets and asteroids, till Space did nothing, her absence not touching the imagined foundations of homes. Softly her feet withdrew, and fetched me in. A Short, Slow Life We lived in a pocket of Time. It was close, it was warm. Along the dark seam of the river the houses, the barns, the two churches, hid like white crumbs in a fluff of gray willows & elms, till Time made one of his gestures; his nails scratched the shingled roof. Roughly his hand reached in, and tumbled us out.

ALT Hide Out The house holds its breath. The five grandchildren are all here. I'm anchored in the conservatory, reckoning in the lynchpin sun while catching a few rays in my grey-beige rattan chair I've been unpacking a box of random memories. They sneak into dusty shadows scattered in four bunches. I am hungry to rediscover my life. Three, two… one. Here I come ! Ready or not ! Nothing moves. A heightened awareness. The house holds its breath. Ian Richardson June 2026