Description

I was walking back from a bushwalk at Bongil Bongil national park, when I saw this scene.It took my breath away, almost like a glowing fire behind the tall white gums. In the painting, it became quite abstract – but it is still real and has a presence.

The poet Magdalena Ball was inspired by the painting to write this poem, which, along with a photo of the painting, is featured in an issue of Openbook, the quarterly colour magazine from the State Library of NSW.

Cathedral Gums

After “Cathedral – Gums at Twilight” by Brian Purcell – Magdalena Ball

We arrive slowly, each of us, surrounded by an invisible bubble,
our eyes hooded but lit under lids by the soft fire of twilight, a stand
of gums rising en mass, spectral, fed by a single root system, mother.

Identical from a distance, up close, the trunks scarred by lines of insect
and vine, peeling bark, and amber jewels, shaking in the evening
breeze, whispering leaf fall and creak, a secret language like code

created in childhood, shared between siblings, before we became
old and lost, pilgrimage, finding one another in wordless sound,
a cathedral, where we fall, knees to dirt, eyes to the light, praying.

No one speaks but we understand, communicate, our own limbs touch
lightly, fingers shaking, eyes wet with a memory that feels like
a dream from which we have yet to wake.