Overland Track, Tasmania
Lake Holmes, this one says,
with three nails marching down
through the middle of each word
LA:KE
HOL.MES
each letter edged
with a small fog of weathering
of frayed silver wood –
two English words posted
to stand watch here,
by this tannin-dark lake
through the wind and snow,
the brilliant light –
since someone decided that Holmes
was worthy of a lake.
Lichen has flowered
over the crossbeam of the H
while the S, angular, jerks
through thirty years of growth-rings,
the chisel awkward at the curves;
and here it hints
at the hands we cannot know
the ranger who cut it
some flickering evening
from a board of mountain pine
but to know its old name
is beyond our listening
and before that? A presence
of darkness and silver, nameless
dip in the moraine,
a pool for the wind’s shaping.