Northbound at dusk

Jeffrey Smart painted this dying day:
burnt orange in floating smokestack steam,
needle-lights stretching in fluorescent dream,
the sojourn of light sinking in silent sway.
Daytime paints its canopy away
and minutes pass in inches as we glean
each moment, weigh each instant gram by gram.
Apologies buy flowers; much to say,
yet time is rare. I wish that now could be
a canvas on a wall that we could share.
I cross the bridge; I mount the street of bells.
Ascend, descend; the sound within us swells,
and expectation greets the seated air.
No movement; move. I gather you to me.

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Homecoming

Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel?
(William Shakespeare)

To the untrained eye, nothing has changed:
smoke still billows from chimneys;
mornings are dark; alarms wake too early;
the mad prince still fools the diplomat with his madness,
the sane with his sanity.

To the untrained eye, all these clouds look the same
and cannot be seen for the smog.
Brakes still wail; billboards roar;
by afternoon, relax your tie –
yet it is not like it was before.
This flesh-and-blood normality
denies this Nonetheless which sits
beside us and inside and knocks
us sideways with its shock of grace.

Everything is rent in two;
these clouds are never still, and all
these forms we fill will not contain
what lies before our way.
For every indifferent sigh, repent;
as the lie falls away,
falls the Day.

Expect Delays

The sky is clear
but in the distance clouds gather
in manifold metallic tones.
The road lies open, save the lane
where a car met a day that ruptured its way,
crushed its bonnet, its schedule;
                                                    we mouth our complaints.
Red messages warn that soon we too will be disrupted.
Slower than usual, no reason or sign,
traffic takes no heed that your wife is sick,
that someone’s possibility has been shattered,
that today’s already a write-off inside your mind.
Functional to the last, roads rule only in chance,
yet birds still fly in sequence
and atop a warehouse a naked cross stands.
Perhaps in this noise somewhere a chapel lies,
and sandaled feet might still flop-flip even on this road,
fingers beckoning, spirit pulling: Follow me.
The self-sufficiency of traffic signs tells
nothing of our insides.
Expect delays; accept delays:
the deism of the day ends here.

Count It Loss

Whether misplaced or stolen, the effect is the same:
the search, the panic, the retracing of steps,
the sense that not an object but an organ,
not a possession but a position,
has vanished, without trace.

Whether passing or lasting, the search seems boundless.
The mind must run to what-ifs because
you never know: the cushion may disguise it, yet
tomorrow may also bear more disappointments
and soon it may be clear,

it is gone. And for now, at least, it is.
You might as well prepare:
its absence now defines you. The gains it bore
now weigh you down, your mind ever turning
to carve possibilities like pillars of salt.

Throw off. If it returns,
the bond must not return with it.
You have lost yourself; rejoice, held securely,
if tomorrow proves lost,

if found.

Music for children’s choir

Headphone-bound, children sing as I round the corner.

The nonchalance of late morning traffic greets

a flutter of flight – black and white feathers –

painting the street in uncontrolled strokes:

a rise, a swoop, a leap, a fall.

 

Ballet-graced, yet deadly in its implications:

too wild, too close to the turmoil of wheels.

Cars persevere. Children sing:

Veni Domine, et noli tardare.

O come; no delay. Around the tyre-tracks of the day,

a magpie fights death as it flies.

 

 

All the birds of the freeway

I journey between factories and billboards and trees;
needles of light pierce the morning sky,
and in the east the vermilion city wakes.

Spanning the distance, birds fly in sequence,
sweeping sheets, kites, giant gulls across the horizon.
When I arrive I will be static, and spark at friction
from those who start their day unawares.

If I cannot have flight, O God, let me kneel;
we deny You with every passive grumble,
each scant refusal of Your song.

On an enclosure of bees in a honey store

The bee is not afraid of me,
I know the butterfly.
(Emily Dickinson)

Busy as themselves, they bustle
in explosion of hum and hive.
Contained, less fearsome, they pattern out their piece of wall
in splendour of black and Emperor’s yellow.
Intricate weaving, a tight-packed fabric of sweetness and protection,
this is nothing to startle at.
Yet children cannot play with them or with each other,
and deathly stings signal the sickness, not create it.
Until lion and lamb are united,
and babies can rest in the serpent’s nest,
until we have no fear of bees killing or dying,
until then we wait, and watch glory from afar.
Beauty still buzzes and demands our sight.

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The sun shines on Wyndham

The Antarctic wakes us with its morning missive blowing.
Swaddled and bubbling, children shiver across the road.
Crossing guard, I open my smile,
bouncing frozen legs to warm them.
To cross the road like a child, I
must race and look not to the side.
What winter brings will soon be known;
the sun still shares the sky.

10 Ways to Embrace the Ring Road

Embrace it.
No other time of day can you sit still,
without compunction.
Here schedules mean nothing.
You may be late; that cannot be stopped.
Yet you can stop. You can look
at clumps of grass and broccoli gums
in wetlands and wonder how they looked
before this road was even thought.
You can watch
the faces as the windows pass
(no other time of day will you
see so many lives entwine).
Invent their stories.
Stop and know your own.
Hold last night’s mess in your hands
as you steer today’s wheel.
Consider the day.
Pluck your nose hair.
Watch birds fly back and forth in sequence
and fancy them a wind-blown sheet.
Name the clouds with metaphors
(a waterfall, a needle,
a walrus’s moustache).
Scan the forgotten gorges of your city and learn
how distances must be covered to move
to where you want to be.
Trace the sun as it chases the trees.
Learn all the textures of its light.
Watch the evening drape the sky.
Prise open this day’s grace.