Thylacine

I walk at the southern point,

in Cradle Mountain,

of the southernly world.

I melt at the echidna’s cute snout,

and awe the red-bellied pademelon

which has been cornered here.

On to the Tasmanian devil — devil?

How rude us foreigners

who came uninvited on ships

and cast down the purinina,

to the depths of hell.

-

All this life that rustles — lumbering in the bush.

I spot the duck-billed platypus,

that once confounded,

a dog and a duck they said of them,

those bright minds

on the other side of the world.

My thoughts betrayed me

I missed the trick

the slips below the waters sheet.

Then to be

in the ocean by St Helen’s

where dolphins and seals abound.

-

I went and wandered on,

but something was without,

over wetlands, grasslands,

rivers and lakes — I looked.

I wondered why I wandered,

what this could not do without.

-

It arrived to me at dusk

a figure from before,

for a mere moment,

it cast a shadow

stared out with lonely eyes,

a haunted ghostly glance.

I ran away,

past where the wombats bounce,

ashamed in moonlit night

a crying wish I pray

upon a painted rock

to end this dismay!

Spring back to life

clean our bloodied knife.

-

What bleakness now

a rainforest made bare — the Thylacine

is gone.

A Tasmanian tiger,

the kaparunina,

will never greet me

less in sleep,

for when I awake

to that land robbed,

there are no tigers here.

I feel extinct,

but not as rare.

*

Author’s Note

This poem was written several years ago when I visited Lutruwita/Tasmania. I acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land I visited, the litarimirina tribe of the palawa/pakana people. I pay my respect to their Elders past and present, and honour all other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of Australia.