Cockspur Bush

Portrait of Les Murray
Les Murray 1938–2019

I am lived. I am died. I was two-leafed three times, and grazed, but then I was stemmed and multiplied, sharp-thorned and caned, nested and raised, earth-salt by sun-sugar. I was innerly sung by thrushes who need fear no eyed skin thing. Finched, ant-run, flowered, I am given the years in now fewer berries, now more of sling out over directions of luscious dung. Of water crankshaft, of gases the gears my shape is cattle-pruned to a crown spread sprung above the starve-gut instinct to make prairies of everywhere. My thorns are stuck with caries of mice and rank lizards by the butcher bird. Inches in, baby seed-screamers get supplied. I am lived and died in, vine woven, multiplied.

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