The Golden Pot

by Roger Patulny

A rabbit smokes beneath a golden pot;
eyes offset and wild
he sniffs the burning evergreen;
soft rump backed into
crevicular roots of acacia yellow
flaring into tangerine.

His faint moustache is twitching,
teeth clucking and clicking,
close to cooking
as the bushfire branches bend about him,
cindered arches, fingers closing,
splintering and snapping.

The little roastling whimpers,
golden nutcracker face
shocked hardening into
cunicular crackling
with hints of nutty wattle.

A fly-in PM, freshly rested
sniffs the roasting, and responding,
keen to help, pledges here
and now to fund a shooting
club, with fine bush grub,
in the new financial year.

As the flames flicker in reflection
on his glasses, and as his fingers move,
he smiles;
golden pots in balance, 
he carefully wipes the mountain ash
from the screen of his mobile.

Roger Patulny is a Sydney based academic, writer and poet, and is the Chief Editor for Authora Australis. He has published fiction in the The Suburban Review and poems in Cordite, Poets Corner InDaily, the UK arts magazine Dwell Time, The Rye Whisky Review, and Silver Birch Press. Excerpts and links to Roger’s recent published creative works can be found here.