Ash Hall
Meridian States
A journey into land: twenty-nine black and white photographs, each paired with three verses.
The book opens with the first days of Genesis and the flood, then travels out across Australian country: rock and gum, the Finke and Palm Valley, Tasmanian pine and stone. The verses are short three-line stanzas of five, seven and seven syllables or so, which the last page names for what they are: waiting for the next haiku.
Photographs and writing by Maggie Hall. © 2021.
01
On day one God made the light
On day two the sky
Day three trees tall and earth round
On day four God made the stars
and the sun for moon
Day five made the fish for birds
The sixth for animals speak
Tell me little fly
Is this ball all green and blue?
02
when will God send the great flood
to wash the land clean.
An Ark built with one window
A door to let in the sea
When the ark is full
Who will be left to go free?
The rains came down to water
The tall trees stood up
No more droughts to covered up
03
Dove to fly what can you see?
The fly turned to dove
and said will you marry me?
Jacob had a dream to climb
Up a ladder high
Warned to not look back.
Curious was the white cat
Jacob turned around
turned into salt while falling
04
Joseph was given a coat.
sewn by his father
All colours under the sun
A basket made from a boat
In it was Moses
Off then the boat shall float
Miriam who did you bring
To nurse your brother
And look, I have found mother!
05
Brushed coverings ochre brown
lonely beginnings
to cross path on middle ground
A maiden from silken thread
The mother and house
Where a crone dares to speak out
Left alone in palindrome
Cornucopian
Recursions of silver bone
06
One rock bends questioning space
while passing the hill
Ghost riding under bedrock
Masks made of flesh and bone play
Watching river run
as rope and rhyme play through time
Sitting by the water side
foxtrot led the waltz
into a promenade edge
07
Hidden tracks of dusty land
Melting fractured sand
while covered night bends to sand
Land embraces the divine
Clearings by the rake
Sky weaves her particle thread
As Vision narrates silence
Screaming agonies
of the spoken bush partake
08
Split end cautions angled web
Lost in the desire
Forbidden clouds nest
These scars will soon fade away
Incensed beating drums
Hidden by the forest nymph
As nightingales shadow wood
Light stills the reply
As the beating riptide comes
09
Dark observations guard fire
Theologies vice
this future year crafting sight
The edge of darkness delights
Caught in the quiet
above the murder of crows
Empty promises in wake
Escorts fall behind
To the land that sleeps alone
10
Destabilisation sets
schools of erosion
between the sleeping sound awakes
Mid-summer reaching in prayer
A clay shaped shadow
Hidden renders bend hollow
The blue gum in quiet pain
Breaking dusk to day
Falling limbs turn in decay
11
Dust separations tripod
Discharging highlands
Configuring clustered code
Palettes sewing the red earth
look to Shadowland
Catching breath, the colour cries
Wave lines eye the Shinai Wood
A silent cove tiles
Marking still life unstated
12
Samples ejected caution
Conversant raw stream
Down to the whistling stand
A land of rocks held in skin
Touched without knowing
Disturbing Earths shielded kin
etching terrestrial land
Prophesising word
Crossed beams to the pass-over
13
A branch of teardrops falling
nothing left but bone
The Dreamtime in a morse code
longstanding society
temples of her own
the commanding lunation
Bed waves of ritual pain
carried through the brush
Pierced to side the silent gruff
14
Let it rain for the dark cries
Deeply hidden crime
Breaking thorns where unborn’ nest
Shattered awake in dusk
Resurrecting breath
cautionary beseeched dune
A language of stolen time
nothing to attest.
The stealing recall of you
15
The Crystalized Paradise
Constructive unknown
A red hill gazing to earth
The untrodden path screams fire
Affected and nude
Powder of the reckoning
storming clouds bend to thunder
Projectile wings in lost shape
Turn to the lightning bird’s call
16
This distinguished grandeur
Nature’s own device
The Misunderstood whipping
Animal’s fish, plants and birds
in agronomy
Salt landforms watch soil erode
Wildlife and habitat birth
Photosynthesis
Deprived sun left to perish
17
imagined distinctiveness
Set reconstruction
Suggest opening the shell
Ghost Gum sleeps by the Finke
A lone Palm Valley
Life beginning as it ends
Illustrations carved in rock
Recollection’s man
Geologies habitat
18
A lost seed rooted in vine
between old anew
Tasmanian Woods quiet
Ghosts of a severed land-shore
Watching over grief
There you are in hidden stone
The wicker burns, sacred land
Consecrating sands
To Question the questioner
19
Shattered horizons transform
Conceived roots cavern
the broken culture airborne
Sitting along water’s edge
a rope and rhyme bend
as crow catches the last breath
Seven days on tapered edge
And all that is heard
each Forgotten colour plains
20
Throwing caution over stone
The orange belt seeds
on her belly like a throne
Nine months with child put to sleep
The wolf twins watching
Close over her resting nest
waiting for the pack to come
take her home again
Two orbs in a dance of fate
21
Inverted realty
Covered Mirrored hill
Stolen inside time repeats
Ashes of the next day rule
Mind of a swallow
teardrops into falling space
Round knolls held against a lake
Confused palettes quest
As the easel waits for game
22
Native recursions decay
Open perceptions
of silenced reality
pictures turning into life
Pages weep in vain
Creation peppered from bark
The giant metronome stops
breathing time to space
in Speaking riddles of wind
23
Parthenos of the green tree
Moral ethics isle
Merged landscapes of rushing Sea
spellbound the wilderness calls
Windblown curtains bend
Beyond the Black Rock they spore
As Foxtrot led the Quickstep
to kissing mountains
and stone walls echo your name
24
Casting lines to catch a turn
Tongue of the seraph
Sweet moments in a red cloth
Movement’s cross over the dream
Fundamental life
Mediums’ apparition
The family for a ring
Flowing tears in vain
Fantasy landforms begin
25
Fauna shelters under bone
Countenance of faith
Flora disguised without stain
Inspirations formed exchange
immortality
stations re-wired formations
Portraits of the hidden stone
Predestination
Counting down solitude walls
26
Perpetrating transcendence
Land’s maternity
Perceptions of deception
conjecture without design
Ground applications
Meridian states pink lake
Sacraments of soil and throne
changing king to queen
Bacteria and algae
27
The temple doors open wide
Watch while the strings play
To the vanished harp
Watch the beautiful shining
Two times in one day
For a bale of golden hay
Come and see with open eyes
Come and see the room
And watch as the lake opens
28
On swam the fish to dry land
Blindly following
Reptilian without hand
Welcome into nature’s church
From beneath the ground
Evolution drums rhyme
In the manger born of man
each wind blows your sail
Come down and find yourself born
29
Sitting under Huon Pine
As the elk stands still
the song whispers in your name
lost inside and safe from harm
cried notes of a tree
thirsty for the tired leaf’s
Waiting for the next Haiku
Turning you around
five seven five, seven five
End