Praise by Martin Langford
It goes down. It all falls away.
Cell membranes, dust flecks, dead leaves.
Praise to the itineraries of drift.
To regolith, crumbling the contact –
the brittle, the lost, the unmoored.
To the ash of burnt ericafolia –
the silver and black of the heath
in the chafe of the wind.
Praise to the dried-up mosaics of the mud,
the scurf and detritus of twigs.
To the dance of the vectors –
the timing as leaf-tips turn brown –
as leaf-sides curl up –
as the veins of the petioles drain.
Praise to the crumple of petticoat-bark
on the ground. To the grapple and twist
of the mallee, the clutch of its roots:
they will powder as well.
Praise, even, this twisting and turning
down unanchored dreams into night –
without which there would be no need
for the radiant lives of the young.
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