THOMAS SIMPSON is a poet and sound artist based in Western Australia. He is completing a PhD at Deakin University combining poetry, walking, and soundscape ecology in south-west WA. His first collection of poetry Bone Picker was published by Ginninderra Press in 2022 and was shortlisted for the 2023 WA Premier’s Prize for an Emerging Writer.
Leading with the neck
Leaving the banks of Donnelly River
an emu blocks
the narrow gravel track.
Her plumage catching
ripples of blue and brown
in barred forest light.
I’m forced to slow
and mimic her gait—
hunched forward, hands folded
under the great lump of my pack,
I lead with the neck
and slowly lift each foot
all the bones and ligaments
relaxing and gathering in a point,
before they spread wide and sturdy
in each balanced step.
We stop and eye
each other side-on
before she darts
into the undergrowth of cycads
and I stand up straight.
The other side of a mountain
Overgrowth heavy with last night’s rain
hangs over the track, its burden painting my sleeves
before soaking my socks.
As the winding starts and resistance builds,
towering jarrah starts to take on strange angles,
leaning away from the earth.
Dirt and pea gravel grow
into stones and quarried steps
of granite boulders.
Short and sharp breaths
leant so far forward I can smell the moss
hanging onto dimples in the rock.
Trees thin and the track disappears—
the only way is up.
Standing, exposed on the sparse summit,
clinging onto a gnarled and crooked sapling
in the sudden wind, I look west.
The humped serpent of the Darling Range stretches
along the horizon—the ocean and the safety of home
no longer visible from the other side of a mountain.
Sweep
Moving incrementally around the camp
with a morning sun—already weak
in its autumnal tardiness—trying
to pierce the dense karri.
Wagtails sweep the dirt floor of the hut
while martins hop over the table and bunks
searching for scraps—glancing at the late starter
shivering as he shakes out his socks.
THOMAS SIMPSON is a poet and sound artist based in Western Australia. He is completing a PhD at Deakin University combining poetry, walking, and soundscape ecology in south-west WA. His first collection of poetry Bone Picker was published by Ginninderra Press in 2022 and was shortlisted for the 2023 WA Premier’s Prize for an Emerging Writer.