The freeway
is riddled with cars.
At every exit, the new estates
cluster among ruins
of rainforest:
houses spread like fungus
down the thick grey trunks
of streets, fallen
everywhere. Video shops.
Clubs. Supermarkets,
white-anted
with trolleys. A golf course
gashes the hill’s flank.
The pineapple plantations,
sharp and brittle—how
they seem to itch
in the furrowed dirt.
And above, worn away
from an older crust,
the Glasshouse Mountains leap
across the dying plain,
the sun carving shadows
from their tall storeys;
they lift like voices,
their hard volcanic echoes
heard faintly, all along the coast.
