Celestial Mechanics

For Evie, when she holds my hand. Arriving, we expand from the car. And I wait while you collect your stuff, the unfathomable bits of personified fluff that you have trapped in your orbit:  Soft toys; knitted ropes; lipper; crumpled notes.  The accretion disk of your formation. I, your natural…

Layering

I. Walk the trail ahead of me into the wild country at the southern end of Namadgi. An unprepossessing trail head — the first sign of beauty is the alpine swamp — but the light of the late mid-winter afternoon is already turning the moments golden. The snow grass lies crushed and…

Man’s Best Offer

A pigeon bobs between the table legs with a shawl about its neck like oil while dogs gaze with an entirety of purpose, the sharp lines of their bodies—noses, ears—converging on a human, its figure or absence. Looking at the doorway of the cafe where the owner has…

Let Me See One Last Thing

For Evie When you see what I have seen And see it better When you love what I love, and better, Then let my hand slip from yours Do not grasp And let me fall behind you on the strand And pass Let me see one last thing you have…

The Way In

An encounter between our hero and a stranger on a hilltop.  An observatory, the creaking sounds of telescopes moving in the dark, the white domes the only things visible in the pine forest. Creeping in along the road past the locked gate, no cars allowed – light pollution. The door-keeper to…

Joyfully Wrong

For Nat, in his 9th year. Follow Rossi Street to its terminus and you’ll find an unexpected fold in the land. It marks one possible end of the town of Yass. A geological circumstance—a fault—swallows the river and on either side the lolloping hills of the Southern…

Growing Pains

Before the day starts, in the small hours when waking means lying awake, you came to me with a pain in your leg. The pain of growing. Your bones and ligaments, muscles adjusting to each other. A dull aching that never achieves sharpness but whose intensity—lying awake—rises and…

The Sacrament of Cycling

for Nat, turning seven The tacit knowledge of a stride begins in the thigh, the four muscles of the quadriceps gathering, calling to the bend of the knee, tendons tightening, outstretching the calf, the ankle stiffening to encounter the unknown, fine bones of the foot splaying as they receive the…