Leslie Almberg, 'Shifting'
Leslie Almberg, 'Shifting'
“Shifting is an anthropomorphic exploration of the natural and cultural deep history of goranwarrabil (the Dandenong Ranges). It challenges the reader’s experience of the serene landscape as a fixed entity by tracing the geo/ecological upheavals and uncomfortable colonial experiences through to the present climate crisis.”
– Leslie Almberg
Dr Leslie Almberg, a science educator, writer, editor, mad word connoisseur, and creator of things spiralling rapidly beyond her control, is often found tripping through the forest or hiding under a book. Her words are painted upon guitars, scrawled across unexpected surfaces by slime moulds, and occasionally susurrated through leaves.
Shifting
Standing here or there all is staid, stationary, an immeasurable immutability
endlessly dependable, reasonably comprehensible, the world is known.
Landscapes ring praises of still-life grandmothers wove into bedtime stories
and mossy soft quilts holding us warm in the unwavering security of stasis.
We coil slow serpentine memory by the mountain’s foot, the river’s head
the torso-smooth valley, a body of work confronting a whisper of change …
And yet…
It is only by the quick-step, the tango, the waltz, punctuated equilibrium
that all has come to be, the topography we see, evolutions and revolutions of you and me.
Shake and shift, a shuddered rift, entrenching storylines oceans wide
burying an ancient tide, thrusting ranges to fight the sky, meteoric flights rejigging life.
This inversion of volcanic perversion forces the downbeat high
a belching eviction of pyroclastic sighs, exacts its constant compulsion for change…
And then…
We fight and flail through a painful fable stuffing our pockets with lessons
pages torn from voices born in dreamtime, worn in the meantime by boot heels,
stalking path upon path, footsteps of wrath, unearthing humanity’s rights.
Learning from trees, the wisdom of bees – store your sweetness in earth to fly free;
weave a new tapestry from stringing bark, marrying now light and dark, striking flames spark the sky, heed the singing symphony of lichen-moss-fern, the deep nod of hyphae chanting change…