Trees sown in lines,
Hallways of dark green,
no end
Lit by shreds of light,
Bordered by blank blocks of grass,
not a stone nor a bush in sight.
A tidied space.
Stray trees push through here and there,
amongst the shapes of forest with straight sides.
Nature has been ordered, but sprinkled with garbage
Clear fields, graveyards,
Uneven fields of white, cream, brown and green.
Flags of blue, steel bars, tar rods…
What is so natural here?
Shaved hillside where the earth’s skeleton lays bare,
These patches of colour produce a disjointed quilt.
Nature is a painting,
This is chaos.
What is so natural here?

Mini Rationale

I wrote this on a field trip to visit the Cherbourg Ration Shed. It’s several hours from where I live and though the road is out in the lovely rural side of Australia, there was always evidence of the land being manipulated to form the roads, lined by fences and split in places. Thought that’s how it is everywhere, I just kept thinking about the phrase “the natural order of things”. I don’t really remember much about writing this poem other than this. It was a free form poem and so had little direction, I was just trying to write about what I saw and felt.