* Poem by Anthony Lawrence

A sky of paired black scales and the diminishing line
an airliner leaves. A window pane

of black ice giving the scales and trail of light
a brooding countenance they might or might

not merit. The scene unfolding on a winter afternoon
in a clearing south of Sydney, where palms burn

and the Javanese deer are being culled
by park rangers using high powered rifles.

Nearby, on a state forest fire trail
shadows are dying out in the pad marks of a feral

cat as it starts the evening shift.
Night is coming down like the weave and heft

of a thrown gauze made from torn feathers
and the wing membranes of greater gliders.

A shutter clicking earthward on its rollers.
Will anyone here speak of murder?

I will, says the seasoned Ballistics
expert, his clipboard alive with statistics.

I will, says the woman with Forensics
on the back of her blue boiler suit - then she clicks

her tongue and squats to study the raised
prints a heavy-duty boot has made

in the dirt. Who else will talk? Who
has the need or knowledge to give voice to

the way a life can end? It's clear
from those who were there, or near

that descriptions of the events that led
to where someone's life was ended

are beyond the calls of the ground and air-
dwelling denizens of this place. Nowhere

they say, as one. Nothing, the night wind blows.
A flashlight stutters and dies. The scene is closed.