Silhouette
By Kat Nolan
Traveling to Bali for the 2019 RMIT PWE Write. Edit. Bali! study tour was an enlightening and enriching experience. A highlight for me was our trip to Ubud for this year's Writers & Readers Festival. In between festival talks, I’d walk around the city streets and reflect on what I’d learned. I soon found the streets offered a different kind of inspiration.
this place is jungle
where wilderness and metropolis collide;
a dazzling display of asymmetric harmony
this city of vines and power lines
which frame the fragile corners of the sky
and droop
down
down
down
stretching to stroke the leaves and frangipanis
that blanket pavements
stumbling in midday heat
chickens run around my feet
in a sweating city
tourists, noodles, bumbags
sunburns, bintangs, cheap fags
below me
rivers streaming
around me
crowds
teeming
clumsy clammy fingers strive to capture the feeling of a place
but all I am left
is this flimsy photograph
I push through the thrum
my footsteps follow thousands before me
my feet lead me
down crooked steps
around a bend
and past a temple
leaves as big as sails
line winding trails
I wander:
what stories have unfolded here through the ages
what poems hide
gripped between the city’s pages?
with a hunger, I want to know them all
though
(secretly)
I love the mystery
hiking up a mountain ridge I begin to see it as a bridge between
past
present
and future
my spirit soars:
indifferent jungle roars a majestic melody
cicadas, horn beeps, birdsong
and my seams come undone:
a red brazen sun against the silhouette of Ubud.
