Streetscape

It will change and change again

these high buildings, these trees

the smell of coffee and rats in the morning.

 

Outside my door the osmanthus blossom

undercut by possum rank and moist

the way the house has stood here, lowering

 

a dozen more years than the

white trunked manifora that towers

altering the shade plan,

 

like so many flats like so many apartments

so many shadows angled across the roadway

flinging themselves in front on the traffic.

Brickies

 

 

the wrist and flick and joust of these boys

building up one lumpen red at a time

walls appear and seem to last

whole cities sometimes

made to plan

the initials in each

looking out over trees that are not there

fire bitten and bronzed with ash

one red faced

the other pale

knows what the other is thinking

when his hand reaches into the satchel

for another

cigarette.