Witness
of all the photos I have of you (truthfully
I don’t have them at all – they’re stranded in an old
phone gathering dust on a shelf in a cupboard
in my spare room) I think most
about the one where you’re standing beneath a great gum’s
canopy, your back bent backwards though only to get a better
view of what? lanceolate leaves against the sea-
blue sky? a float of clouds? (this scene
will have a second life in oils on canvas
no concern for precision – you wanted
an approximation, what they call a naïve practice, but I knew
even as a child, you were looking for something
beyond); perhaps it was the silence
or the sound, via your good ear, of a cockatoo in the distance –
white or glossy black, that didn’t matter either, neither did the name
of the tree: you may have been a man of science, but botanical
nomenclature was not in your nature – perhaps it was the cool air
on your sun-brown but thinning skin, or it was the light, dappled
calming, it could have been the feeling of a breeze passing across your cheeks
your lips, or, in your nostrils, the almost narcotic whiff of eucalyptus
or you were divining sap’s pulse beneath the bark
that abiding desire to live despite everything settlers
like us have done to Country (my observation, not yours)
there might even have been something to taste
maybe, if my imagination could hit
a higher note, I would say that, through your boots
the soles of your feet, you could feel the roots as they reached another
millimetre of Gondwana soil, where, as we know now, & you knew then
(so I want to believe), trees call out
for a conversation with each other, for music too
perhaps, just perhaps, in the trunk – as wide as the world &
coloured & scored like an ancient map – & in the branches
that might be a giant’s ageing arms, in the canoe
of dead wood, grey-black & cracking, in the glass-like cicada
carcass clinging on, in the sense of an ending
just around the corner, you saw yourself
the thing is I can only guess, because guessing is all I can do
now – the tree (I picture it in the back paddock
of a farm my brother was caretaking at the time, but I doubt
I could find it in real life), yes, the tree you loved
to admire is alone of you & so am I, of you, my paternal
blood, as are the pixelated records stranded
soon to be lost because of another dump of technology –
I can only dare to wish that when I, too, am almost
ninety-four (three decades beyond the song) I will stand
beneath a great gum’s canopy, my back bent backwards
though only to get a better view of lanceolate leaves
before I, too, fall & find you in the humous
Solar Array
the very first moment, when I can almost taste the heat on my skin, I want to raise my hands to the heavens & thank whatever deity exists for this bliss, sun in the creases & cracks, the folds dark forests, secret valleys to be whole beneath the whalebone sky free of all constraints how lucky I am to find this thing that takes me out of myself so I can dwell in the here & now of a hidden headland one that isn’t so hidden for those in the know only a handful but a handful is all I need oh, this rush, yes, it’s a drug, but the most wholesome self-dare to celebrate myself in this way, a self who is only body & breath, my heart hammering as the rays reach in & squeeze my gizzards look at me! or don’t look at me lying here, any worries I have left along the highway, discarded like a Magnum wrapper to be like this in the blue, on the sandstone threshold of the ocean that’s as restless & true as a mind made for time tempo, notes, half notes, quarters quavers up here, among banksia & callistemon, what coda is waiting for me? please, let no music get in the way of this saltwater silence that isn’t silent the sea sings its songs, even if only to me, who is bare as the day he was born of blood & a mother
Nigel Featherstone is a queer writer for the page, stage, and music. His most recent major work is The Story of the Oars, a play with spoken songs, which had its world premiere at The Street Theatre in 2025 (music by Jay Cameron). Nigel’s novels include Bodies of Men, which was longlisted for the ARA Historical Novel Prize, runner-up for the ACT Book of the Year, and shortlisted in the Queensland Literary Awards. Recently he has been shortlisted for the ACU Prize for Poetry and the Newcastle Poetry Prize. Nigel is also the founder of Hell Herons, a spokenword+music collective that released its debut album, The Wreck Event, in 2024 (with Melinda Smith, Stuart Barnes, and CJ Bowerbird). In 2014 he was commissioned to write the libretto for a song cycle, The Weight of Light, which had its world premiere at The Street Theatre in 2018 (music by James Humberstone). Nigel’s short works – prose and poetry – have appeared in Guardian Australia, Meanjin, Lantana, Griffith Review, Oystercatcher, Rabbit, Kill Your Darlings, Horseshoe Literary Magazine (Canada), Chicago Quarterly Review, and AC | DC: Journal for the Bent (US), among other outlets. Nigel lives with Gandangara, Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country. More information can be found at https://www.nigelfeatherstone.com.au/ and @ngfeathers
Locative Magazine 