A dancer upon reality's mirror

My memory knows the pitfalls,

those places of pain where

the soul asks forgiveness

for its failures.

Is it better songless

to skim lightly

with the knowing that

one day, one time,

eventually,

something beyond memory,

an ancient need,

will demand more,

rising formidable and stern

to face

your wandering form

and say

Now!

It is time!

You must cross

the river stones one at a time,

turn back to look -

but those, 

there on the shore,

pale figures in the trees,

their cries are bird song.

You will wish

your touch had been

purer, like the music

that finally

reaches you

on the other side.

The bird-killing tree of the Great Barrier Reef, pisonia grandis

 Black Noddy on Lady Elliot Island, Great Barrier Reef, Australia

 Removing the barbed seeds

some of the sticky seeds - note the stalks that are like grappling hooks

Black Noddy with chick in the pandanus plants on Lady Elliot Island, GBR, Australia

I like to think of non-human nature working for the best in a challenging world: beneficent, evolving with the needs of complex communities. I understand there is killing but, unlike with humans, all to a purpose: nothing wanton, little wasted.

I also thought that there was a hierarchy of power and strength so it did not cross my mind that a tree could kill a large seabird. But one can and it's not a pretty sight, especially on a tourist island in full season.

The Pisonia grandis tree is grand by any terms, especially as a survivor on a small coral cay coping with poor soil and intermittent cyclones. It manages to grow into a mighty tree over twenty metre high with wide branches and a large grey spreading trunk with tentacles like an octopus clinging to the soil. The leaves are large and bright-green and much favoured by seabirds to line their nests. The tree seems to cater for the birds with many spots available for building nests. If you compare it to the other main trees of the coral cay islands, the allocasurinas, you can see why the Black Noddys and the Bridled Terns favour this apparently perfect tree. But there is a nasty side-line to this generosity.

When the birds breeding season is in full swing with thousands of seabirds occupying every nook and cranny of the coral cay, the seeds branches of pisonia trees mature and drop to the ground.

The seeds are born on a branching structure as big as a human hand and each stalk bears many centimetre long seeds, rather like long grains of chocolate-coloured rice, but this is barbed rice. While the seeds are immature and green they are no danger.

However, once the seed branchlets dry and fall to the ground they become a deadly trap for the birds.

At this stage the seeds exude a glue that adheres to whatever touches it - perhaps the tail feathers of the many buff-banded rails that frequent these islands, or most often to the flight feathers one of the thousands of nesting seabirds that alight under the trees for shade, preening, or for meeting their mates.

When one seed adheres the whole branchlet remains with the seed and very soon the other seeds stick to further feathers: the long flight feathers and the fine downy feathers of the head and neck. Before long the bird cannot fly and the more it tries to remove the seeds, the more other seeds catch on. The bird walks around under the trees, trying for days to free itself before it collapses and dies of exhaustion, dehydration and starvation.

Of course, these birds are couples and the partner waiting on the nest for relief and food for their chick must eventually abandon the chick to survive itself.

When we saw birds in this situation on Lady Elliot Island we were distraught but were told by the staff of the marine centre that this was 'nature' at work and that only approximately 1% of the birds die and furthermore that the death of the birds helped the trees to grow as their decaying carcasses would provide nutrient for the seeds to germinate.

However, after some research I find that both these statements are not correct. This is according to current research in the Seychelles Island of Cousins where they have found that depending on the timing of the crops of seeds the death rate can be as high as 25% in some species and that the germination of the pisonia seeds is not facilitated by being within the carcass of a seabird. Nature Seychelles have now adopted a policy of removing stands of pisonia grandis from Cousin Island. Yet on Lady Elliot Island in Australia they are busy planting more.

My husband and I spent some time catching the disabled seabirds that were covered in pisonia seeds and removing them. It is not easy. The barbs and the glue are a horrible combination and it took two of us some time to remove the intertwined branchlets with their lethal seeds from the bird's bodies. However, it gave us great pleasure to set each bird free and see it disappear over the sea.

I have alerted Lady Elliot Island to the new research from the Seychelles and I have written to Birdlife in Australia to ask for their guidance on current Australian research. It appears to me that Lady Elliot Island in particular is operating under old misconceptions. 

https://seychellesseabirdgroup.wordpress.com/2013/06/02/pisonia-grandisa-grand-problem/

POW Memorial, Sandakan, Borneo.

There is a dark grove of trees on the hill

of Sandakan,

where the prisoners finished their lives,

or began to finish them

in unspeakable ways,

no gentle deaths allowed.

The powerful ones showed

such ingenuity in torture.

How to slowly crucify.

How to punish the body

with heat and starvation

before merciless death.

The men were brave,

the survivors said,

when ulcers ate their legs,

perhaps a whimper or two.

The jungle took their bodies.

Felt hats decaying in the undergrowth.

Then the death marches,

to finish them off in Ranau

under the shadow of Mount Kinabalu.

The barely-alive still hoping, somehow,

before the final shots from

men obeying orders.

This story has many variations

on war’s hills and valleys.

What are the questions

for captive and captor?

Both answers hide within us, waiting

for history’s awakening.

The Pilgrim Road to Santiago

(For Nerma)   

I met a young girl

on the road to

Santiago de Compostela

when the journey was nearly done.

Her load she bore lightly

as she shortened her pace for mine.

I am not a man,

but when the day comes,

for counting the memories

I will recall her beauty.

What gift could be given

along the way, taking each step

closer to Santiago’s gleaming city?

The spires there heavy with ancient meaning,

stone angels in perpetual

supplication and holy desire.

What could I say of life?

There were things I could have said,

but was I able to tell her

what I could not tell myself?

Walking as the dawn broke behind us

I thought to open her eyes

to the magpie’s call

in the dark cathedral of the morning.

Will you be sorry at the end

for the goal we wish for?

But it is not the end, she said.

She showed me the stones

that she carried, each one

fitting the palm of her hands.

What could I tell her?

The vines touched with gold

with September’s chill,

dogs howling at our passing.

And when she was gone

with her swift tread

my heart ached

with the sweetness of life.

Maybe what I sought

had travelled with us.

The gift had been given.

My Father

He does not listen any more, my Father,

when I phone him from across the world,

same day, same time every week.

His words carry a message he will not speak.

I cannot answer, for what can I offer?

I would like to say that I will be here

to listen again, to believe the past;

stories of old worlds he lived through,

for the present is a confusion.

His eye’s centre has disappeared,

slipped away, blanked out from overuse.

He has seen too much in the tropical suns.

Words I have heard before keep flowing,

as I listen to his breath, 
the heart beneath

and the life,
more precious than I can say.

The Emu Eggs

We climbed the desert mountain,

bush walkers, past pride of youth.

Private journeys across the cliffs

burdened with pain of body and soul,

our backs to the vastness,

mutely we challenged the red rock.

Suddenly, the plateau, beneath the sky.

Nothing else, nothing above.

A lightness of the air, such beauty

surrounded by the expanse.

A view uncontained, layers of blue and purple.

Far below, the bed of an ancient sea.

And there now at our feet, more wonder still.

An emu’s nest, full and round bearing seven eggs.

Here distilled, the colour of tropical seas,

the high wind of the callitris.

A gift beyond expectation,

a journey transformed.

©Anne Chappel

The Ethiopian Coptic Cross

(made from old bullet cases)

Bullet cases from the Sahara,

poor brass discarded

in the shifting sands

from forgotten wars,

one tribe settling

scores of ancient hate

till all memory is lost

of the original sin.

New sins blossom,

the only flowers

in a land where

starving goats hunt

last year’s pods

under dead trees,

and a boy child

watching the hills

balances a rifle

across his knees.

The old man hammers

out of the bullets

holy crosses

whose patterns

hold hands in a

splendour of promise.

©Anne Chappel