It is not hard to touch a face
by Alisha Brown
Perspective: Eucalyptus scoparia opposite Baillieu Library
Get directions: 37°47’54.8″S 144°57’35.6″E
I begin as early as possible—open
leaves, stippled bark, early light prickling filament.
Morning rounds over buildings
and bike racks.
I wait for a time, some time, a
change in moisture, the passing of birds and beetles.
There is the wind.
There is the institution.
Ants hide their tiny prayers between bricks
and scatter towards other important business
while flowers plume their purple heads
into the air.
I begin as the world does—
reaching.
Windows are lit. Stamen split the sun
like little scythes. Then
they come, leg by paired leg, their marvellous bodies
uprooted and rhythmic
over the earth, all hair and blunt teeth,
scratching through our shared breath
with their armpits and backpacks and the softest, sweetest carbon.
I remain still.
I butterfly the light.
Below, my growing shadow finds a passing collarbone.
I touch the hot black pool of an eye.
Fancy responding to the Eucalyptus scoparia?
One response to “Eucalyptus scoparia”
-
Alisha’s words in this poem form images, conjured viscerally, in my eyes through the intimate first person voice of this eucalyptus tree. Its branches, my eyes too, looking out, looking down on the world at the Parkville Campus.
I can see the moving legs, the ‘ … leg paired by leg … uprooted’ as the tree remains rooted to the ground. It made me aware that I have the choice to move around the world. The tree must ‘… remain still.’ The world moves around it.
The tree sees the ‘… blunt teeth’ as something that stands out, in contrast to its burgeoning branches ending with feathery leaves that ‘ … butterfly the light.’
And it highlights for me the reciprocal giving – ‘ … sweetest carbon’ for the sweet oxygen that I breathe in without a thought.
I will think now as I pass by a tree, of its shadow finding my ‘ … collarbone.’ Of its shadow finding me. And me finding it.
Thanks Alisha!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alisha Brown is a poet born on Kamilaroi land with ties to Wonnarua, Yuin, and Gadigal Country. She won the 2022 Joyce Parkes Women’s Writing Prize, placed second in the 2021 Woorilla Poetry Prize, and was nominated for the 2025 Pushcart Prize. You can find her work in Westerly, Griffith Review, Cordite, the Australian Poetry Anthology, and Blue Bottle Journal, among others. She was a featured artist in the 2024 Emerging Writers’ Festival and works for The Suburban Review as Submissions Manager.
Words from Alisha
My friend who attends The University of Melbourne sent me a series of photos of a beautiful, old gum tree in a grassy cleaning surrounded by university buildings. In one of the photos, her hand was touching its trunk. I wondered whether the tree might wish it could reach out and touch people of its own accord. Then I imagined that the tree was excited to do so—that it was fascinated by the flesh and movement of humans, that every day it looked forward to stretching out its shadow and touching someone’s face.
FIND OUT MORE
This Eucalyptus scoparia can be found on the University of Melbourne’s Urban Forest Map along with all the trees across the Parkville Campus.
Your comment will be reviewed before it will be posted here. Our team of editors will also curate a selection of responses for publication in our anthology.