Headless Mountain

The sun retreats in coral glow,
creeks hold their memories close,
paperbarks twist,
cicadas drum timelessly
and at the landscape’s heart
the round shouldered mountain
a brooding witness.
The legend tells of waterways
filled with Maroochy’s tears,
Coolumn’s head severed,
cast adrift off Mudjimba Beach.
The magpie on that low branch confirms it,
see her eyes?
What sense to make
of the manicured greens,
the driveway lined with flags,
the golf carts whizzing by?
I close my eyes,
like the magpie
watch the paperback swamp
sucking down the fairways,
the Yinneburra tribe come back
with a sudden flicker at the horizon,
like an incantation,
erasing it all with night.

Jane Frank’s work has recently been published in Australian Poetry Journal
and the Bimblebox Art Project in Australia, as well as Skylark Review and Southlight magazine in the UK. Jane teaches a range of writing disciplines at Griffith University in Brisbane and the Gold Coast. She has just completed a PhD examining the rise of the global Book Town Movement.