A great place, when
       you think of walking into the cool embrace
       of trees, wrapped and assaulted
       by the blast of the summer cicada storm,
       and the leaf mould comforts  your nostrils
       at every step, the fantails swift swirl
       branch to branch, feast
       on the insect cloud of your passage,
       and a fat wood pigeon sits on a branch
       and will not be moved
       till she has finished her long, long,
       thought.

       it's a different world
       when the wind rips up the valley
       and the trees open sky paths
       and fling themselves every witch way,
       and the creek makes slips and torrents
       and the ti tree bites your eyes with flying bark
       the path has slipped and your ankles
       sting from the slide..

       a different world from the wide flats
       which bristle in the battering heat of thyme,
       where even the overpowered rabbit
       sleeps by the rock: a different world
       from the one where Black Frost centres you
       like an ache in the deep hollow of your chest,

               or the clay cliffs
       twist over a river far below,
       deeply sinuous,

       different where, in the bumpy pasture
       far beyond the willows, farm bike and dogs,
       and sheep lie panting and adrift
       by the green of the dying pond
       and the wind pump scarcely sighs,
 

       a different world lying here in the quiet
       a different world,
       under the same grey dome of sky 
       in all her changes.

Alice Thorpe
May 1999