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…
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…
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…
For Nat, beginning School Ride the wind with me. To ride the wind – in any form – to fly a kite, loft a balloon in the gloaming, hear the snap of a sail, or glide on feckless membranes over a salt white deathful-playful roil – to be grasped by the wind is…
The Macquarie University train station took my breath away the first time I slipped below the surface of Herring Road: the long gliding descent into a cavern shaped like a monster’s egg laid in the crust of a world—vanished leaving only its negative space. I was entranced. But,…
There is a dead rosemary growing out of the Cafe table, dried silvery and leaning. It’s a victim of the vogue for indoor greening. Planted in a corner, where it is too sheltered. Rosemary is a full-sun kind of plant and its paused form is expressive of this love.…
There is a man making bubbles by the Archibald fountain in the park — a street entertainer drawn here by the crowds. In this place at the northern end of the park all the pathways converge and the sound of water announces the confluence, a pedestrian eddy of suits, tourists, joggers,…
[a nativity poem in three trimesters] The First Trimester Miriam’s chromosome in courting spirals Embraces another, such an other — an unfathomable Y. All the junk, viral, evolutionary, specific, sanctified, elected, DNA of humanity in his threadbare pockets. An utterly adopted son. A why of Adam and of Miriam’s…