'Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads' -- 'I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there' -- Mea culpa: cleaning the gutters -- On being asked to join the Coondle-Nunile volunteer bush fire brigade -- A set of images makes the day -- Whang! -- Bonewrest -- Stubble quail at Jam Tree Gully -- Skins -- Battening down -- 'Now only a dent in the earth marks the site of these dwellings' -- Disturbing the ashes -- Gala days -- Disturbed ground -- Four scenes -- Pressure at the boundaries (of Jam Tree Gully) -- Convergence -- Kangaroo doe -- The qualities of sadness -- Entrée -- The roo killers -- Insomnia at Jam Tree Gully -- Settling house -- On the great red storm -- Envoy.

Prologues -- Arrival: first lines typed at Jam Tree Gully -- We spend days in this house -- De-fencing the block -- Goat -- Dream of what's below -- Eagles at sunset stock epithet -- Reptile life -- An elective of gradients -- Hive liberty -- Leak -- Sheep leg -- Eventing -- Saturday afternoon -- Solitude -- Away -- Reading -- Extending the house at Jam Tree Gully -- Digging -- Some sounds at Jam Tree Gully -- Storm Cicadas -- Desire lines -- The dry dry -- Eagle affirmation -- Single-lined photos -- Lichen grows in the moonlight -- Kangaroos in the fog --Balloon -- Rehabilitation is its own profanity -- This will not be a model farm -- Bulbs and corms at Jam Tree Gully -- New lichen! -- Inverse brass rubbings -- The town and river overflow -- Architecture without ornaments -- Cloven hoof -- Higher laws -- Spring pollen -- Impressions -- Building (extension) -- Beans and Jam Tree Guly -- What compliments to nature -- Joy -- Greedy after this gossip -- Chaser bins -- Closing the gate -- Voices that carry across the valley -- Past tense -- Language generates nothing as whole trees fall -- Contrition is not the sole preserve -- The immolation of imagination -- Survey -- Town hall meeting: minutes -- Urban attitudes in the bush? -- Hair -- Jam Tree Gully sonnets with incidental rhymes -- Sacred kingfisher and trough filled with water pumped from deep underground -- Calm -- Reading the poetry of Arto Melleri and looking at the extensive world within the frame of my window -- House at Jam Tree Gully sestina with variations -- Red shed -- Inside the red shed -- Jam Tree Gully awaiting diagnosis: a run -- In this damaged state -- A Jam Tree Gully sheaf -- Eternally green -- 'Any prospect of awakening' -- I had wondered about the signs of burning -- 'For the root is faith' -- On large farms nearby -- Rock overturned by God-knows-what -- Pricked fingers -- Kangaroos in torchlight -- 'Whose discordant screams were heard long before' -- Night explosions --

Collects the author's poems about understanding humanity's responsibility and bond to the land.

Tertiary/Undergraduate, General.