For Thursday Art Day, local Toowoomba author and poet Susan Skowronski www.susanskowronski.com has kindly allowed me to share her dreamlike photograph of the Dalrymple Creek in Goomburra National Park and the moving poem it inspired.

Please enjoy …

Dalrymple Creek in Goomburra National Park

GOOMBURRA

Goomburra dawning awakens my senses

Nature’s wild Spirits take hold of my soul.

Gum trees – tall ladies, models slender and sleek

Spring Carnival fashion so proudly display

gum nuts and blossom, branches of grey

in the coolness of dawn seductively sway.

Mists of the morning shroud a crystal clear creek

unseen, a bellbird bids the forest ‘Awake,’

A whipbird arrives with unmistakable crack

joined by the bowerbird and superb fairy wren

to accompany the magpie and currawong’s song

Deep in the leaf litter –he won’t be outdone –

Fleay’s barred frog ock-ocks to the sun.

Goomburra morning weaving a spell

creating a mind-space I’ll carry away

past gold laden wattle and orchids so rare

giant spear lilies, grass trees and oak

over rocky creek crossing, on winding dirt track

back to the city, back to where I belong.

A place to revisit again and again

recapture this moment of beauty serene

my heart will rejoice and my spirit find peace

in memories of Goomburra daybreak in spring.

(c) Susan Skowronski 10/9/2013