Islamic Greens

by Steph Walker

Islamic Green trees
– sick mottled eucalypts
burn against International Klein Blue sky

where dark nights cry
upon snaggletoothed pillars, wrecked by movement
and wind-torn gestures

prolonging, a tint of the past
fear of future:
blazing bright colour with cool degrees of difference

as satellites drift
and beach waves beach, biting and fermenting
along limiting shores

rich rations ripen
with hands that turn cards

the greenest, tartest apples
fracture amongst voices

the whitest of noises
as gravel rests on grass
with cold dust and sand-smoothed glass, once sharp

water lashing warm faces
the high-pitched wail, the sound of soil-wrung hands
ringing themselves

only in footprints
of the past could we recall
the moments before:

fractures, steps of elevation, falls

steps over swollen beaten country
borders running courses, running
from one end of the atlas
to the other

as broad dusty hands
stretch

hands stretch – over cards and hips,
the way you think of wings, shoulders
and jaws
as broad and powerful

a diversity of fear
mottled, grafted, fused like vines
the strain of wrists and fingers

feel this: a flutter of wings meeting
torn torsos
warm hearts beating

clawing young stems with course leaves floating
rising to the sun

not for Islamic Green vines
but for gloveless,
dirty hands, wrenching
in fracturing caress

soil rung hands, draped and wrenched
and clawed down,
swollen beating – beatless

beach waves beach
and bleary eyed satellites drift away
from wind-torn jetties that remain
toothless, motionless, beneath
International Klein Blue
sky