they are so buff
the light the shadow
the definition of them
crowding to bulges skin cannot know
tempting the magician in all of us
to say – I know, ididthatonce.
but it would be a lie
because the way they gain weight
and sturdy their tendons
is octopus swivel territory
through a loop in the wind they are
parading until they need to cry
down on the isthmus of your neck
there’s a flecked pattern only i know how to read:
the seams and tracings
are where we will meet
and know another one day
we will be so changed and become so stiff
we can no longer nod
our necks and heads one cracking joint
where thoughts are ants that have lost their way
one thing might join another
scarred up where the surgeon
pressed his scalpel in and down
long ago and with such grace
that the sweep of it is the one same line
it says our bodies protrude like arms of land
out into the sea of air
scoping space from other elements
insisting on salt and iron to make up blood
and then calcifying with so many
tiny crystal infusions that draw their edges
exactly as the sun shade speckle
that fell on your skin
immaculately out of view so
no matter how you crane
you cannot see
the plunge was taken
wet lips to forehead
remember waking by yourself?
when light tongued the wall
lick marked the window
yellow saliva on the foot of your bed?
no matter how many times
you changed the sheets still that smell
of kissing goodbye to sleep
rock a bye dreaming
because it doesn’t matter if it’s yours
mine, the way the earth breathes out
at 3 am and saunters towards morning
the 2 way breath hissing spindrift
all the ways we travel will lead us here in the end
together, apart then together again
dark, light and dark again
the inside outside of my mother’s body
Dog For Caitlin
That summer we loved a small black dog
Whose eyes always seemed to
see beyond the immediate –
moving her neck from our stroking
To examine the future-hazed distance.
She lay by the door, always found the shaded places,
the tunnel through the honeysuckle, the trough
under the verandah where coolness pooled
musty, in the old dairy dark.
She would come when we called,
out into the light, her eyes half-closed
her muzzled dusted
and she would let us stroke
– with our sticky child’s hands –
her earth-cooled fur.
Imagine the traffic skirting your tree
hunter of the underground
your liquid voice – it brings up the sun while you carry shadows on you back – the past’s setting only knows noir
there was only ever right or wrong –
notes so perfect and flute clean
to make the crisp morning tremble
all you worshippers surrender themselves
imagining their own pied skins under the furs
setting candles at your alter and carving your totem into their footprints
hushing the children to listen
listen to the song of the surviving bird.
Planes change course to avoid disturbing your nestlings;
fledglings are guarded by boys who have learnt to cup their hands so gently
that they are known as magpie monks
and are given special privileges
like staying up with the elders to listen
for the September cracking of the blue eggs.
all this for the bare tremulous note.
The true song.
The bird law.
As the sky leaks
so will you
a minute apocalypse
of fluid
once seemed to be yours then falls
and you find yourself outside yourself
exacting callous flow
from time to time.
He cannot change this
small wonder
that leached your bones’ own filaments
the fine lines of marrow
borrowed
from the sun or some explosion
in the sky
where all this seems to start
and end.
You see yourself
as structured from surroundings
like birds
who weather
wear the sky from claw to beak
themselves a drop of yolk
sunset pinched to yellow
the salt blue of that fellow
how the clotted bloodstream
twisted up with iron and elements
whose very names – nitrogen oxygen hydrogen –
are foreign outsiders marching
on time’s own order
not soldiers of the self
that pulled me from you and then on again
file after file
in a library of clouds.
Some days you are the sky’s
immense sadness
that speaks up and is surrendered to
blood cord taught
that ends all ends
and will conclude…
The kitchen has all the evidence
of breakfast balanced in exact disorder;
the egg shells spills of milk
fresh grains of crumpled weetbix
finely ground by hand
and honey strands arranged from
jar to lip and back to jar.
I am armed with a cloth
about to wipe it clean and delete the morning’s ritual
divide the crusts among the chickens
water down the dust and spray
sand away the places you carved your names
the indelible crayon that travels
beyond the paper and onto the wood.
But there, in the slant of the morning
my will, my wishbone shatters.
It is now mixed with the milky map of the uneaten,
I watch it congeal next to the toast
which is exactly as you left it
and travels from past to present and back again.
There will not be another morning
with clamour and mixing of this honey and this time;
the children have left
there is no returning
even from lip to lip
no more milky traces to follow home.
the smooth sky is rapid with wind
air that smacks heat and belts the trees with it
until they bend into sulky mouths
the slap-down heat of the iron hot hands
melts bitumen with the constant light
all along the famished grass
flicking and bloodless clouds
mock shadow under the eye
the covered stains beneath skin
scales as it heals and dries
to stormcloud edging as hidden
as pollution and as rife.
The villain currawong owns the whole garden;
on cusp of morning the swoop of his voice
corrugates the quiet
the flute and twist
of the future
nest and swoop
mimic his yellow speckled eye.
His black intention
intuits the sun
pricks the light from shadow
flies into the house
and collects up the morsels
leftover laughter
cut-offs of thought
that tremble under the table.
His scimitar beak will load them all
his throat tickled by that last thread of your dream
that pendant of your longing
and he flies it home
to the white manifora
after he feeds some to his young
swallows the rest whole.
poemation 