under a lilly-pilly moon

 Under the blood moon

…no, that’s wrong,
that conjures wolves
chasing across snow
hearts racing with fear…
No, not in late spring,
and not here
where the closest thing to a wolf
is the ginger mutt curled at my feet.

So let me start again:

Under the cherry moon,
Earth’s-shadow pinked,
a warm northerly caresses
the swelling berries,
still pale but ready to blush.

No, still not quite right…
Begin again, begin with what is here:

Under the lilly-pilly moon
the ginger-mutt mutters,
paws twitching, ears flicking
at a boobook’s plaintive cry.
Adrift on bloodborne ancestral songlines,
in his dingo dreams he chases the ‘roos,
that thump past
like the slow, heavy heartbeat of the bush.

This was written for the dVerse Razzie prompt, which was to write a poem incorporating the title of a film that has won a Raspberry (worst film) award. It was also prompted by last night’s blood moon, which was red because of the syzygy (alignment) of the sun, Earth and moon. And the botanical name of the Australian native lilly-pilly which grows red or purple berries is syzygium (although I only found that out after writing the poem and googling lilly-pilly to check my spelling).