Each Step:

[ Stick and Buckle-Slope,

Slip-Scree and Boulder ]

[Written after walking seven kilometres on a broken leg, with the help

of my sons, up and out of the Moroka Gorge, in the Wonnangatta Wilderness,

a remote part of Victoria’s Alpine National Park.]

For my sons: Timshel & Dylan

Stick and buckle-slope,
slip-scree and boulder.
I am a bush-walker-man in
Trouble: I know where I am!

I’m just a bit broken now,
gamy-legged. It was by just one
miss-step I am turned a wounded
thing, greensticked by that one false
step after six thousand mountainous
steps! I inch on - now I step on my own

wild bone-break and savage terrain
as I got into this. I must get out,

saying: ‘Maybe it’s only

sprained! A twist?’

Stick and buckle-slope,

slip-scree and boulder,

Wild bush-crutches just step me now.
(Forked hazel-pomaderris poles)
my sons cut with a pocketknife, the bush
struts lashed across the forks for
armpit-bruisers, rough bearers of
a body-weight my leg wont take.

Stick and buckleslope,

slipscree and boulder

Yet, I walk! a crone! inching is

some relief! I step like a crawler,

getting there will be late, - as vulnerable

as a hot January gumleaf in leaf-fall -

fragile to gravity in my own weight.

Slip-scree and boulder,

stick and buckle-slope.

Stone and grit and boulder,

crackling stick-leaf, root and slope,
- this game-untrammelled country
- makes its inhospitable tries to get me

Slip-scree and boulder,

stick and buckle-slope.

The rough diamond element conspires
to rubble me, worse, to skew me into curse
in my pain, to needle my injury.
Each step is a milestone, a victory.

Slip-scree and boulder,

stick and buckle-slope.

Five wild miles of pain are a life.
Elation is no one wrong-step.
Ecstasy is hard distance covered…
with no stop to wince in pain.

Slip-scree and boulder,

stick and buckle-slope.

Small things retain in each step, the ant,
till the pain proportions the hours
by a hundred-to-one odds - that drop:
a bush litter, a ring-pull, shirt-tag, bits
that fell, having nearly lost a man...it’s me.

Slip-scree and boulder,

stick and buckle-slope.

I lay there in the midnight pitch
as January hours swelted:

Too warm to rest in peace.

Slip-scree and boulder,

stick and buckle-slope.

A cool river decants a descant

down Moroka gorge,
like an unattented siren

of somnolence

in distance
a magnetic song

heard without resistance
as breaking nerves bellowed up

the forge of my lit fire,

comfort lit ,

a glowing

wrought of the night.

Slip-scree and boulder,

stick and buckle-slope.

Then seductive bed-rack jawed a new danger!
Bullants use tracks like armed veterans
to acid-bite die-sticks pointed at flesh.

Woodroaches, off spitting firewood,
get away like charry ghouls marching
in memory of a January wildfire.

And this was January! I had to quell
the urge to put out the fire!

I got here on a broken leg!
Uncounted filamented centipedes
in as many itches
leg in to the exhausted place
where I lie to rest.

Slip-scree and boulder,

stick and buckle-slope.

Sticks in the surrounds, scamper and scuff
There outside I where I close my eyes.
Wild dog claws fang the flesh-of-my-mind
scavenging some wounded creature.

Deer antler and hoof my seeming corpse.
Bashing the scrub on the getaways.

Slip-scree and boulder,

stick and buckle-slope.

Night crashes the bush - that clumsy spy.
Frogmouths moonscreech their lidlessness.
Yet, finally, this dawn has no outside rescue,
birdsong times match one hazy source of light
as morning hours inch across the integral line.

Slip-scree and boulder,

stick and buckle-slope.

This me, broken sleepless body,

in stepping out again in a sleep of pain,

is a broken joy, as broken, my despair

is cease, all common anxiety: dead.

Slip-scree and boulder,

stick and buckle-slope.

Cooee! this pain of body is
tearing my soul of its death.

Slip-scree and boulder,

stick and buckle-slope.

Wildflowers are my desire to get out
Where blooming hope is I am bound,
my own boneskin moves over the shards.

Slip-scree and boulder,

stick and buckle-slope

I am, a fractured cripple, next step,
Like a cracked bottlespill of spirit,
To step closer elated, up in my soul
Smacking the flesh of my lips
towards that bodily release.

I get by with the help of seed strength
That sown by the step last taken, and
The step, many steps, taken before that.

It is my sons who help me, my daughter
Like a fellowship in bond of victory.

Stick and buckleslope,

Slipscree and boulder.

Each step of seven kilometres on a broken
Leg, with one or another son at my side, a
daughter at the end.

Sons are like handrails in the soul,

a help - where offspring are spring Steel,

where self respect is in a spirit that knows

that present suffering is embraced
for a high destination that breaks

us into the higher.

Jan-Dec 2000 © Wayne David Knoll