It's tall open forest and scrub - not much pattern in it.
Fauna is resilient to single fire, or
low to smoulder and to long low thunder.
Inland storms bring the big pattern of the snake.
This is land history, although, I hear it -
the impact of forests and foreshores is not well recorded.
A skink's breeding pattern is vulnerable to heat.
Fires wind the system down,
slip off the edge of a burnt stump, it's central dust,
a jagged claw rips the air with silence.
Silence: which rings in the wood of the clapping sticks.
Semi arid; where regeneration, is slower and longer.
Mammals in the gorge sun, driven by cover and structure.
After fire; a rapid regrowth of casuarinas.
Woody seeds have turned internal to contemplate heat,
They cracked and split their bodies open.
Animals exposed with their habitat gone
on the hot black char - it's slow intensity,
leaving deposits, of thin bone.
There are still she-oaks - evenly aged, in the drier, slower country.
This fire captures a period in time,
and wipes it out.
Fire: moths, spiders, slaters, termites, silver fish, cockroaches.
Burnt ground, burnt grubs -
Small rodents, shelter by burrowing into the edges of big cliffs.
Homestead mice rush in and fill an unoccupied niche.
After the purple thundercloud has swept up the crackling heads
of the fire - the stumbling golden wheat crop will quickly die,
it's like a slice of paper - we examine its burnt triangular grids.
The longer, the drier, the slower the country, subtle recovery.
Jarrah are trees of rapid response, in moderately open habitat.
Frogs spoke bush through an open car window,
louder than our engine on the highway at 2 am.
Frogs driven by moisture regimes in tinder dry country.
After fire, moisture and return.
Eucalyptus - a fire tree, no petals,
a cap over the bud,
woody capsules and voliable oils.
And extremely important, is how a tree interacts with rain:
[Rain fall] [Impacts the earth] [Many tons of raining] [In an hour, or so] [Rain falls onto a forest] [Pushing mud into rivers] [As a thin green mist]
Effect of rain:
[Little of this thunderhead] [Penetrates beyond the canopy] [Rain is often light and gives up easily] [The longer, the drier, the slower the country]
Finally, the subdued voice of the scarlet robin before dawn,
when the sky is smoky crimson,
in a burnt out mountain valley,
where the birds appear to answer each other after fire
when perched on tree stumps,
with their red and white markings
standing out amongst the blackened landscape.
