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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

For Nat. 11 Years. 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

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

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

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