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Flowering Eucalypts

High above in the tall canopy the Eucalypts are flowering. I can see the creamy white blooms when I am looking down from the train or standing on a cliff edge. But walking in the forest I am hardly aware of the flowers except for those snipped off and littering the ground below.

Eucalypt Flowers

From Flowering Eucalypt in Autumn by Les Murray Australia’s leading contempary poet.
"minute urns, pinch-sized rockets
knocked down by winds, by night-creaking
fig-squirting bats, or the daily

parrot gang with green pocketknife wings.
Bristling food tough delicate
raucous life, each flower comes

as a spray in its own turned vase,
a taut starbust, honeyed model
of the tree's fragrance crisping in your head."


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