ephemeral

Greer Taylor - ephemeral - poetry

While traveling in wild places both nearby and further afield, on foot, by kayak or by 4WD I am often encouraged to write: most often I write while sitting on a rock — to feel the earth beneath me … and it seems here, that I know more than I know …

In September 2014 I published a collection called ephemeral. It brings together some of of my ”wild-place” writings together with images of small ephemeral artworks made in the bush.

Our contemporary world has become disconnected from nature and its mysteries — to our own peril. The intention of ephemeral is to reconnect readers to nature one-story-at-a-time (visual or text). ephemeral brings nature and wild places into our homes — it is my hope that readers will (and many have told me that they do) pick up ephemeral every now to be reminded of the fragility, beauty and depth of nature and that we are intertwined — we are it and it is us.

The book specs: 74 pages, hard cover with dust jacket, features 30 poems and 31 colour images.

Below is  poem from the book:

And now this inland lake is full… a yellow-grey expanse covering
the now-saturated mud that had lain exposed to the sun for the last years.

Like a magnet this water brings traveling life. Birds are making their way her
following some unknown, unknowable signal that water now lies inland.

A “V” of ducks appear on the distant shore, have they just arrived? Landing
on these ephemeral waters for the first time? Whiskered Terns are here, delicately
floating with pointed wings on the breezes that are today whipping up the surface
of the lake. Australasian Grebes have bred, juveniles already foraging and diving
at a distance from their parents.

Nearby trees shake heads of verdant green and sing the music of butcherbird;
a celebration of this water and its journey from distant rainfalls
across parched soil.

A million insects fill the air. Skimming the water surface with an urgency
that speaks of mating — procreate at any cost, before the water goes… their
bodies an essential source of food for ephemeral visitors who will come until
the water is no more. Until starvation and death replaces the light-hearted sense
of hope now dissolved in these ephemeral waters.

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